The Brave at Heart
by StellaBlue29
Summary: Rivalry with the Gryffindors has always been standard for Melanie Hastings. But friendships can form in unlikely circumstances; in a sudden whirlwind of competition, mischief, and secrets, she must learn to face the challenges of growing up as the increasing threat of Voldemort looms on the horizon. (Sirius/OC)
1. Beginnings

I walked onto the Hogwarts Express from Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters at the King's Cross station. I was about to begin my first year at a prestigious wizarding school, and I felt both excited and nervous, for I had no idea what this year would have in store for me. As a shy eleven year old, I was a bit scared to leave home – I had never been away from my family much before. I didn't know anyone around me, since my seventeen-year-old brother Nathan had gone off in search of his friends, so I wandered around on the train for a moment until I found an empty compartment, hoisted my suitcase up and sat down.

I was joined by a tall dark-haired girl, who introduced herself as Charlotte Avery. We bonded quickly, as we both wanted to be in Slytherin. I personally didn't know anything about the other Hogwarts houses, but both my parents had been Slytherins, and Nathan had said Slytherin was the best, so it must be so.

Charlotte told me that the best wizards were always in Slytherin, because most Slytherins were purebloods. I kept silent, as my family wasn't pureblood; I supposed I would be considered a half-blood, as two of my grandparents were Muggle-born.

Soon, a short girl with shoulder-length straight blonde hair pushed open our compartment door. "I've been searching all over, everywhere else is full. Can I sit with you?"

"Sure!" said Charlotte. "Is this your first year as well?"

"Yeah, you too? I'm nervous!" she admitted. "I've got no idea what House I'll be in. I'm hoping for Gryffindor, because my Mum was one. My dad is a Muggle, though. Ravenclaw sounds good too; my aunt was a Ravenclaw. What do you think? I'm Amanda, by the way."

Charlotte and I exchanged glances. If we had to endure the entire train ride of her talking, I would die. She didn't seem to want to shut up, and didn't even give us time to answer her questions.

"Of course, Hufflepuff might be nice; it sounds like the friendliest house. And then of course there's Slytherin too. I'm pretty sure I won't end up there. I don't know what I would do if I was in Slytherin, because everyone says all the evil wizards seem to come from there."

Her speech thus concluded, we sat in an awkward silence. I was too shy to say anything and just cleared my throat to break the quiet. Charlotte smirked. The girl, Amanda, just looked at us, realising the discomfort of the situation. "Well, not every Slytherin is evil," she said quickly, "of course not, I didn't mean that…"

We were suddenly interrupted by two other kids – a stringy, pallid boy who had long greasy black hair, and a pretty auburn-haired girl with bright green eyes. "Can we join you?" asked the girl tentatively. "There were some idiots teasing us in our other compartment."

"Sure," Amanda said, glad to change the topic. "I'm Amanda."

"Hi, I'm Charlotte," Charlotte chimed in, moving over on the seat to make room for the newcomers.

"I'm Melanie," I said.

"I'm Lily," said the girl as she sat down, "and this is Severus. We're both first years."

"Nice to meet you," said Amanda. "I'm so excited for this year. I've been looking forward to going to Hogwarts ever since I first heard about it."

"Me too," said Severus.

"My brother is so jealous," said Charlotte. "He's a year younger than me, and he wants to go too, but he has to wait until next year!" She laughed.

"What's wrong, Lily?" Amanda asked, and I looked up to see an anxious expression on Lily's face. "Aren't you looking forward to Hogwarts too?"

"I am," said Lily hesitantly, "but my older sister hates me now since I'm going. She wanted to go, too, but she can't do magic. My family are all Muggles, you see."

"I'm sure she doesn't hate you," said Amanda consolingly. "She'll get over it soon enough. When you go back home for Christmas, you'll see how much she missed you."

"I hope you're right," said Lily. "So are your families all witches and wizards, then? I'm starting off so far behind everyone else – I don't know anything about magic! I'm worried I'll make a fool of myself in class!"

I'd never considered what it must be like to be a Muggle-born going to Hogwarts for the first time. But her concern was no different from mine, actually. "Don't worry, I think we're all going to be rubbish at the start," I told her. "When I was testing out wands at Ollivander's to buy my wand, I accidentally set fire to a shelf. You can't be worse than that."

Then I wished I hadn't said that; I probably wasn't making a very good first impression. But Lily laughed. Severus patted her shoulder in a sort of awkward way. Maybe we would all turn out all right.

Eventually the conversation turned where I had hoped it wouldn't, but it was unavoidable: Severus asked us, "So what house are you hoping for?"

I didn't respond; I wished I knew more about the other houses and I didn't want to sound stupid. Amanda was looking uneasily from me to Charlotte. Charlotte answered that she wanted to be in Slytherin, and Severus looked pleased. "Wouldn't it be great if we were all in Slytherin?" he asked.

"Yeah, that would be so fun!" Charlotte agreed. "I hope we are."

As the food trolley came by, Amanda and I bought a few pastries and sweets while Charlotte got out her _Daily Prophet_ newspaper from her bag.

"You read the newspaper?" I asked, surprised; it seemed so grown-up of her.

"I like to know what's going on," she told us with a satisfied smile. "There's loads of weird stuff happening lately." I glanced at the front cover of the _Prophet_ , which featured a large picture of a strange, ugly snakelike man and a caption saying "Lord Voldemort Strikes Again."

"Who's Lord Voldemort?" asked Lily as Charlotte folded the paper in her lap with that article on top. I offered Charlotte a Pumpkin Pasty, setting it on top of the newspaper's photo of Voldemort's nasty-looking face. He scowled as he got crumbs in his eyes.

"He's this new Dark wizard," she responded, picking up her pasty. "I've never heard of him before. But apparently he just killed some Muggles."

"That's awful!" cried Lily.

"Maybe it was an awful Muggle," said Severus indifferently.

Amanda snatched the paper from Charlotte's hands, and her expression became darker with each line she read. "Well, I don't understand most of the words in here, but it sounds like this Voldemort doesn't think Muggle-borns are proper wizards." She looked up at Lily nervously.

But I was talking with a Muggle-born right now, and she seemed like a very sweet person. How could anyone not think Lily was a proper witch? She had a wand and she was going to Hogwarts, just like me. And my Granddad Omar and Grandmum Astrid were Muggle-born, too, and they were proper wizards.

An uncomfortable silence had descended upon our group, but Amanda suddenly asked, "Erm, I've got some Exploding Snap cards, anyone want to play?" She stood up and grabbed some cards out of her trunk.

I was awed at her ability to totally lighten the mood. After a few rounds of Exploding Snap and lots of random chatter (mostly brought on by Amanda), we were feeling much better, and even I was almost talkative. I secretly hoped that whatever happened, my new friends and I would all end up in the same house, no matter which house it was.

* * *

After the train ride, and a chilly trip in boats across the lake, we walked up a staircase and entered a great hall with hundreds of floating candles. Nathan had told me that the ceiling was enchanted to look exactly like the sky outside. It was beautiful, although I was slightly afraid I would get hot wax dripped on my head from the candles, so I kept glancing up uneasily. The older students were already seated; everyone except the first years. We were ushered into a line, all of us terrified. A hat was placed on an old rickety stool in the front of the enormous Great Hall. It sang about the four Houses… Gryffindor for the brave and chivalrous, Hufflepuff for the loyal and just, Ravenclaw for the witty and creative, Slytherin for the ambitious and cunning. When it finished, a severe-looking woman with a thin, serious face stood near the first years and called out names. "Avery, Charlotte," she said. Charlotte gracefully walked up and put the hat on her head.

"SLYTHERIN!" it shouted. She smiled at me, left the hat on the stool, and calmly joined the cheering Slytherins at their table.

"Black, Sirius." A dark-haired boy walked up, and I heard Amanda giggle behind me.

"GRYFFINDOR!" bellowed the Sorting Hat.

"I want to be a Gryffindor," said Amanda. I looked at her, bemused. "No, honestly, I've always wanted to. And I heard him talking on the train, he's funny. I think we'd be good friends."

I looked over at the Gryffindor table, where Sirius Black was now seated. I knew of his family; the Blacks were well-respected pureblood aristocrats, and all of them that I knew of had been Slytherins. Now I had just seen one sorted as a Gryffindor, and he looked thrilled. I wouldn't have expected that.

The line of first years grew steadily smaller. Lily Evans was also placed in Gryffindor. I didn't know what I wanted now – two of my friends were already in different Houses. My stomach leapt into my throat as I heard "Hastings, Melanie." I wobbled up to the Sorting hat, and slipped it on my head, where it sank down and covered my eyes.

"Ah…" said the hat, "very just, and a hard worker, so perhaps Hufflepuff… but such independence as well; I see determination and a desire to prove yourself. Hufflepuff or Slytherin? Hmm… let me see."

Hufflepuff? But Nathan had never said anything about Hufflepuff, and none of my new friends were there either. "I want to be in Slytherin," I told the hat; I didn't know enough about the others.

"Slytherin? Are you sure? You would be a great Hufflepuff… Okay then. Remember that many great wizards and witches have come out of each of the houses… and for you, it's SLYTHERIN!"

My family would be disappointed if I were sorted anywhere else. But was I happy with it? I still had to figure that out. Why had I just gone with what I was familiar with and not let the hat decide? And what did the hat mean with those last statements? I was so deep in thought and frustrated at my impulsive decision to ask for Slytherin that I forgot to take the hat off my head as I began to walk over to the Slytherin table. As I heard laughter ringing out all around me, I set the hat back on the stool and ran back red-faced to join the Slytherins. I sat next to Charlotte, who had thankfully stopped laughing by the time I sat down. My brother was at the other end of the table, sitting by a boy with long blonde hair. Nathan gave me a thumbs-up sign as I sat with the Slytherins, although I could tell he had been laughing too.

But the Sorting went on, and I hoped people weren't looking at me anymore. Soon, after two new Gryffindors were announced (Remus Lupin and Mary Macdonald), we heard "Macintosh, Amanda." Amanda took one last glance at the Gryffindor table, more specifically, at Sirius Black, and then walked shakily up to the stool. She sat there for a long time.

"She's probably telling it about all of her family members," Charlotte whispered to me, giggling. The laughter was wiped off her face, though, when the hat called, "SLYTHERIN!" But her face didn't even compare to Amanda's shocked expression.

* * *

The Slytherin common room was a dungeon, but it was comfortable and cosy. There were some green lights, sofas, and a fireplace, and far away at the opposite end of the rectangular room were two staircases, separated by a bizarre portrait of a man in a spotted suit who told me to brush my hair when I first walked past him. I wondered if some wax from the candles had dripped into it.

The girls' staircase was on the right; I walked up and found a beautiful green carpeted dormitory. The window opened right out at ground level near the shore of the lake. Shortly the other girls came up to the room, and one of my roommates was Charlotte. Only four girls were in the room and there were five beds, however, and I realized the person missing must be Amanda. I went back down to the common room and found her sitting behind a sofa, crying. I felt badly for her so despite my shyness, I sat down beside her.

After a few moments' silence, she turned to face me. "Why?" she asked, her blue eyes full of tears. "Why would it put me in Slytherin? No one else at Hogwarts likes Slytherins! I just don't understand. I even tried to bargain with the hat to put me in Gryffindor. I'm not meant to be a Slytherin, the hat was wrong."

I patted her shoulder and said, "It'll be okay." She clearly didn't believe me. "You said on the train that all your relatives were Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, maybe they're just biased?" I added with a shrug. "Charlotte and Severus seem really nice, and they both got sorted into Slytherin…"

Amanda merely shrugged, so I told her, "Look, I'm starting out awful too… I was so excited to be sorted in Slytherin, but now I'm not so sure, after talking to Lily and reading that thing about Voldemort. I don't know whether I should be in this house either." I was pretty sure that wasn't exactly comforting, and I doubted she'd really care, to be honest – but I said it anyway.

She scowled at me. "The hat thought about putting me in Ravenclaw, and I wish it had. I don't agree with anything Slytherin stands for, and I'm a half-blood."

"You're a Slytherin because you have ambition and you're clever, and stuff like that," I insisted. "You'll do great things and go far in life. That's what it means. Besides, if you'd been sorted into Ravenclaw, then we wouldn't have been in the same house together. I'm glad you're here."

Finally, a smile crossed her face. "Thank you. I guess I shouldn't be so worked up over it, but… it was so unexpected. I really thought I'd be sorted somewhere better."

"There is nothing wrong with being a Slytherin." I said it more to assure myself than her, but I hoped it would help console her as well. "We'll be great."

* * *

One of the first things I noticed was how correct Amanda was in her assumption of how the four houses got along. Slytherin and Gryffindor had a long-standing tradition of rivalry, and no sooner than the first week of classes, after we'd learned only a mere handful of little spells, first-year Gryffindors James Potter and Sirius Black had already figured out some hexes and tested them out on Amanda, Charlotte, Severus and me on our way to dinner one day. They had made little clouds which followed behind us in the air, spelling out the words "Kick me, I'm a Slytherin."

Potter and Black thought this was hilarious and followed us, re-casting the spell when it wore off. Severus retaliated with a perfect Jelly-Legs Jinx; he was already quite good at spells, and eager to get one up on the Gryffindors. But those two Gryffindors, even as first years, soon established quite a reputation for themselves as pranksters, and they, along with two others, kept the school on its toes and generally laughing. Maybe Slytherin wasn't the most popular house, but it meant that we enjoyed more than our fair share of fun against Gryffindor.

* * *

We may not have started out well, but what is life without a few challenges? So after five years of learning magic, meeting new friends, and petty rivalry with the Gryffindors, here I was back on the Hogwarts Express again with my best friends Amanda and Charlotte as we went off to school for our sixth year.

It was always good to return to Hogwarts, which felt like my second home. But every time I went back and forth between home and Hogwarts, it felt that the world had changed a little in my absence. And indeed the wizarding world was a different place from when I began school; Voldemort, the Dark Lord we'd read about on the train during our first year, had spent the intervening years carving a trail of violence across Britain and leaving a wake of misery and death behind him. I could only hope it would all be over by the time I left Hogwarts, because I didn't want to think about it, and I certainly had no place in a war. Figuring out my life was going to be hard enough without having to consider a war as well.

My friends and I caught up on our news and watched the familiar scenery pass. After we had shared stories of our summer, our conversation turned to more random topics, such as Mandy's new fascination with mood rings. As we were discussing the many perfections of Italian food, two other sixth-years entered our compartment. It was Sirius Black and James Potter, two of the biggest troublemakers in school, and also two of the brightest students. They were also both blessed with very good looks. Needless to say, they were rather popular – something I resented about them, as my friends and I were just a group of misfits. James had his arms crossed and a smirk on his face, and Sirius was leaning against the doorway looking very carefree, his shaggy dark hair falling into his eyes. Upon seeing the boys, Mandy's face turned the colour of a tomato, and she nervously twirled her hair around her finger.

"What do you want?" asked Charlotte without looking up.

"How unfriendly," said James. "We just came by to talk, is there something wrong with that?"

I scowled. "You never talk to us, except for when you've made a mess somewhere and you're trying to avoid getting caught. Who did you hex this time?"

"Prefects will be coming by any time now," said Charlotte cheerfully.

But Mandy did not see things as we did. She just saw this as an opportunity for flirting, and grinned at the boys. "Hey guys, come join us. I think I have some chocolate frogs or something." She waved her hand at me as if to make me scoot over to make room for the newcomers. But I wasn't about to. And those were _my_ chocolate frogs, not hers.

Sirius sat down beside me and James sat next to Mandy. Charlotte, on my other side, continued staring out the window, largely ignoring our visitors. "So," Sirius began, taking one of my chocolate frogs and unwrapping it to take the Famous Wizard card from inside it, "I was thinking—"

"Really? That's new, I didn't realise you ever did that," I interrupted.

"Hey, look who it is," said Mandy, nudging James's elbow and looking at the door of our compartment. Lily Evans, a Gryffindor Prefect, was walking by, shaking her head in disgust. James stood up, ruffled his already messy black hair, opened the door and flirted unashamedly with Lily, as usual.

"Evans," he said. "You look even lovelier than you did last June."

And, as per usual, Lily was far from impressed. "Stop it with the flattery, Potter. You should know by now that it will get you nowhere."

"You know I can't help it Evans, I'm only speaking the truth."

"Then would you mind telling me why we haven't even been on the train _five minutes_ and I've heard that already you've hexed Severus and made his hair bubbly? And Selma Yaxley didn't grow that beard herself."

I suppressed a laugh. There had always been intense rivalry between any members of Slytherin and Gryffindor House. I'd had to go through a phase as the butt of jokes due to James and Sirius a few years ago, but that had worn off eventually. There was still rivalry, but they didn't hate us. But with Snape it was different. Severus Snape was James and Sirius's arch-enemy. There had been mutual hatred between them ever since the first day of school, and ever since then they had been jinxing each other incessantly.

"Well, they're Slytherins, and they were in the way," said Sirius. "Snivellus particularly, he walked past our compartment and you could tell he hadn't washed his hair in weeks, so we just thought we'd help out with a bit of shampoo…"

I stared at him. "Er, if Slytherins are just in your way, then why did you come visit a compartment full of Slytherins?"

"And for heaven's sake, leave the girls alone too!" Lily continued. "I can see you two are up to something. Have you for some reason got it into your huge head that every Slytherin is out to get you? Are you in there just to bother them?"

"Of course not, what makes you think we would do that? We're just talking!" James grinned. "Fancy joining us, Evans?"

Lily sighed heavily, then turned away from James. "Hi Mandy, Melanie, Charlotte," she said, in an entirely different, much softer tone of voice. "Good summer?"

"Great," said Mandy.

"Wonderful until these gits came along just now," I quipped, gesturing to James and Sirius.

Lily grinned. "Well, it's lovely to see you again. I actually came by to get signatures on this petition while I'm patrolling the train – it's for equal pay for men and women potioneers. It's a serious concern that's been raised by the few women in the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers." She held out a scroll of parchment, and I took it.

"Of course," I said, grabbing a quill out of Charlotte's bag, adding my signature to the list, and handing it on to Mandy, who signed instantly as well, commending Lily on what a good thing she was doing. Once Charlotte handed the petition back to Lily, Sirius spoke up. "What about us, eh? Can't we sign too?"

"You want to?" asked Lily, wide-eyed with surprise, and handed the parchment to him. "Thank you, Sirius! I think it's really valuable to have signatures from boys too, it shows that the inequality between the sexes affects everyone, not just women."

James signed as well, and handed the petition back to Lily with a smile, and she gave him a tentative smile back, which only made James grin wider. As Lily bid us goodbye and shut the door, James's eyes lingered on Lily's retreating form.

He'd had had a crush on her ever since I could remember, but in five years he had never once managed to impress Lily. This was because he tended to show off whenever she was around, which only annoyed her. And as if that wasn't enough, James's continuous pranks on Snape throughout the past five years had counted against him as well, as Lily and Severus had been close friends since even before Hogwarts, and Lily had hated it when James picked on her best friend.

Now, however, Snape and Lily were no longer friends – our dream team from the train on the first year was no more. Mandy, Charlotte and I were still on relatively good terms with him, although I didn't trust him much anymore these days, as Snape had gotten really into the Dark Arts; he invented devious spells and often hung around with bullies who were snobby about blood status. Lily, who saw the good in everyone, had continued to stand up for Snape despite his growing interest in the Dark Arts – until after exams last year, when Snape had gone too far even for Lily's acceptance. He had angrily lashed out at her, calling her the insulting term of _Mudblood_. That opened Lily's eyes to how different they'd become, and she finally gave up on their friendship.

Perhaps Snape hadn't given up yet, though; as Lily disappeared down the train away from our compartment, Severus came out of a nearby compartment and walked after her, stopping to scowl at James and Sirius as he passed us.

After a few minutes of idle chatter with the boys, they left to rejoin their friends, and I was not surprised to see the floor crawling with enormous ants just after they left… of course the boys hadn't been here just to talk. We managed to get rid of the ants and then spent a good ten minutes jumping in paranoia anytime anything tickled our arms.

"Well that was a blast," said Charlotte. "Nothing like ants on our necks to welcome us back to school." I was also relieved they had gone but Mandy was still pouting that the boys had left.

"Oh come on," I told Mandy, "you'll have plenty of time to flirt when we get to school."

"I wasn't…" she spluttered, and turned red. Then she turned to face Charlotte instead. "So, Char, you've been quiet."

"I haven't been quiet," said Charlotte, "you just couldn't hear me over the sound of the ants left here by your beloved." I grinned at her, and Mandy scowled.

And soon enough, the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station and we rode in carriages up to the castle. This was always the longest part of the journey for me – although it was only a few minutes, I could practically smell the delicious feast I knew was waiting for us at Hogwarts, and I could not wait to reach it.

During the Sorting Ceremony in the Great Hall we marvelled at how small the incoming first years were. And to think that we had once been so little and so scared. As usual, Mandy and I cheered for the new Slytherins as loudly as possible – we had to show our yelling was more spirited than the Gryffindors, after all.

After dinner, Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster, gave his usual quirky speech about the places that were out of bounds, and about his fondness for the school song. "We're back," said Mandy with a grin, clinking her goblet of pumpkin juice against mine and nearly knocking it over. "Here's to a good year."

* * *

 **Author's Note: This was my first fanfiction (written between 2007-2012!) The story covers a two-year time period, so things start out kind of slowly as friendships take time to** **develop.**

 **Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. I'm only borrowing some characters for a while.**

 **Thanks for reading! And I'd love to hear what you think!**


	2. Business as Usual

The first week of school passed by slowly, as everyone readjusted to having to think and write essays. On Sunday afternoon, I was sitting on my bed, attempting to diminish the mountain of homework next to me, while most people were outside enjoying the autumn weather and the perfect crisp yellow and red leaves that covered the grounds. Somehow I was already behind on my work; I almost regretted spending most of yesterday afternoon kicking huge piles of leaves with Mandy.

"How's your essay?" Mandy asked, as she lay on her bed eating Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.

"It's rubbish," I said. "I don't know anything about Potions. Have you started yours?"

"Oh… um, I just finished."

I sighed. "I can't think anymore. I've been daydreaming for about ten minutes."

"I saw," she said with a smirk. "You were dribbling."

I scowled at her.

"Need help?" she asked, and then walked over to my bed and picked up my discarded essay.

I watched her cross out some things on my essay, thankful my best friend was so good at Potions, my worst subject. Ever since our very first day at Hogwarts, Mandy and I had become remarkably close. We formed a tight friendship despite the awkward first train ride, and now we told each other everything, helped each other with homework, and got in trouble together. The two of us easily clicked – once I got past my initial shyness, we were both rather spirited people, whereas Charlotte rarely displayed emotion other than cynicism; she was a rock who brought Mandy and me back down to earth with her calm and her sarcasm. We all balanced each other out, my two best friends and I.

"So what were you thinking about earlier?" Mandy asked excitedly, as she set my quill down. "I bet you have a secret crush you're not telling me about. That explains the drool."

"No," I said truthfully.

"Is it Sirius?" she asked, completely ignoring that I had said "no" to her previous question.

"If I said yes, you would probably kill me," I teased.

"You didn't say no… you're avoiding my question…"

"No," I admitted, and Mandy looked relieved. I laughed. "Honestly, I don't know what you see in him, he's such an arrogant git."

Mandy was a wonderful person, but I wished she'd set her sights on someone a bit more realistic. Sirius had had a few girlfriends over the years, but nothing serious; he was more interested in pranks and mischief with his friends. He would certainly never go out with a Slytherin; he rarely even talked to us.

"So, is it Russell?" Mandy guessed, ignoring me. "Oh, I know. Severus Snape!"

"It's no one, Mandy."

Mandy sighed dramatically. "Boring," she said. She looked down at her lap, and tugged at the hem of her skirt, then asked me, "Do you think my skirt is too short?"

I looked at it; it was far above her knee. "Yes," I said.

"No need for your sass," she said, scowling halfheartedly; clearly this hadn't been the answer she wanted. "You'll start to sound like Charlotte."

"Hey, you asked my opinion, so I gave it."

Mandy shrugged. "Well, I like it this way."

I highly doubted that Mandy wearing her skirt shorter this year would finally make Sirius Black notice her, but I kept silent on that. "Time for Potions," I said, reluctantly looking at my stack of papers on my bed that seemed to be waging war against me.

"It's done, remember? Here, Transfiguration. We can work on this together." She got a stack of parchment off her bedside table, and a quill and ink. "Turning a table into a tortoise… first we have to make sure we can do it, then we write about it." She readily looked over at my nearby bedside table, but then seemed to think better of it as my table was quite cluttered with a spider-plant, a lava lamp, and my large collection of peculiar looking, colourful stones. Mandy flicked her wand and conjured a new table.

"I'll try it," I said. "Okay… um, I think it's…this," I waved my wand floppily, and we were immediately faced with a particularly vicious alligator.

"This will take a _long_ time," sighed Mandy, setting down her quill.

I looked at the alligator, which was currently attacking my slippers. "We should get rid of that."

* * *

The next morning when I stumbled sleepily into Potions, I took my usual seat with Mandy and Charlotte, and were joined by Hector Branstone and Russell Rabnott, two of our fellow sixth year Slytherins. They seemed awake, as did most people in the class. "How did everyone finish their homework?" I asked Charlotte. "We've had tons this week! I really didn't envision NEWT-level classes being this intense from the start."

"Maybe you'd have finished earlier if you hadn't been organising your rock collection," said Charlotte.

"It was messy," I mumbled.

"It's okay, Mel, I didn't even start my homework," Hector admitted. His dark hair looked untidy and windswept above his brown face – he had probably just been playing Quidditch all weekend and never gotten around to studying. This was the hardest part of coming back to Hogwarts – over the summer we seemed to always forget how to study, and then classes were a rude awakening the first week back.

"At least we don't have exams like the O.W.L.s this year," Russell reminded me. "We'll get through it."

"And don't forget Quidditch tryouts on Wednesday," said Hector.

"Of course!" I said. I had tried out last year, but hadn't made it onto the team; our captain, seventh-year Roger Simms, had a penchant for choosing his friends for the team rather than people with ability. But maybe this would be the year everything changed… I could only hope.

The class quieted down as the Potions master entered the room jovially. Professor Slughorn, a plump, short man with a walrus moustache, was one of the teachers I most disliked, as he tended to pick favorites who were either brilliant at his subject or knew important, famous people. He was also Head of Slytherin House; I often wondered why we didn't get someone nicer.

"Right then, I'll collect your essays on the Polyjuice Potion," said Slughorn. "Miss Macintosh?"

"Um, three," Mandy muttered. Some people laughed. "What?" she asked, raising her head. "Oh…"

Slughorn smiled and said, "Today we will be making the Draught of Living Death. You know what this is for, of course? Lily?"

She hadn't even had her hand raised, but I knew Slughorn would call on either her or Snape – they were clearly his favourite students. "It is a very powerful potion that puts the drinker into a deep sleep," she recited.

"Precisely; ten points to Gryffindor. Well, the ingredients are in the back cabinet, and instructions are in your book on page ten."

Now that we were into N.E.W.T. level, all four Houses had all our classes together. So now the Gryffindors wouldn't just be outshining us in Transfiguration, which we'd had with them last year – they'd be beating us in all classes. I worked hard at my potion, determined to win Slytherin some glory against Gryffindor for once.

There wasn't any glory for Slytherin, though – at least not from me. My potion was blue and frothy and produced an odd humming sound, though it definitely wasn't supposed to. At the end of class I began packing away my things, brushing my frizzy brown curls away from my face. My hair smelt like the potion now – really terrible, in fact.

* * *

Of course, Mandy had finished all of her homework by the time Quidditch tryouts began; I still had a stack of empty parchment the size of the Astronomy Tower. But I was going to be at the tryouts no matter what, going for the position of Beater, just like last year. When I had played games of Quidditch at home with my brother and his friends, they had always made me a Beater because none of them liked doing it. But I liked it, and Nathan had always said I was good at it. I wasn't the strongest hitter, but I had great aim.

I convinced Mandy to try out with me, which she consented to do – although I had a feeling this was mainly because she wanted to ogle the boys rather than actually be on the team. So I grabbed my Cleansweep Five broomstick, Mandy got one of the new school brooms, and we spent an hour behind the castle practising: me hitting rocks with a stick in place of a Bludger and Beater's bat, and her zooming off to catch the rocks (she was trying for Seeker). It went well, and I was briefly filled with hope of being on Slytherin's team and perhaps even becoming Captain next year.

The first people to try out were the Chasers, and I was happy to see Hector keep his spot on the team. As he walked off the field, he pointed at me and then gave me two thumbs up, and I grinned back at him. The prospective Beaters were next, and three people other than myself were striving for the two Beater positions. Stephan Flint, a seventh year, was first, and he was good. Richard Nott and Edgar Bulstrode were all right, but they both missed quite a few Bludgers. I was last, and despite being under pressure, nervous, and trying to ignore Hector's loud whistling from the stands, I thought I did rather well.

"Our new Beaters are Flint and Nott," announced Simms with a sneer. I sighed and slunk off to sit next to Hector and watch the Seeker tryouts.

I paid little attention until Mandy got up there. She did remarkably well catching the Snitch amidst the Bludgers and Quaffle and the several other players that were flying around her, apart from one rather embarrassing moment when she actually stopped to blow a kiss at Andrew Derrick. Apart from that, I was proud of her, but Simms chose Warrington as Seeker instead.

After the unsuccessful tryouts I went back to poring over my immense piles of work in the common room. After what seemed like hours of writing, I practiced some nonverbal spells for Defense Against the Dark Arts, and then, rubbing my stiff shoulder, I came up with a plan. A small break for something fun would be refreshing, and then I might be more motivated to finish my work afterwards. A quick look at the clock on the wall informed me that there was just enough time before curfew.

I propositioned this idea to Mandy across the table – we could just take a walk around the castle and perhaps get some snacks from the kitchens. We would have to hurry lest we get a detention for sneaking around the castle after hours, but over the years we'd developed a list of the best corridors to use for things like this: ones with abundant statues or tapestries to hide behind in case we heard someone coming.

From the kitchens downstairs, we walked on up several staircases, and were nonchalantly prowling a seventh-floor corridor near a painting of a fat lady in a pink dress when we heard a sound in the empty hallway. Mandy grabbed my arm and we hid in an alcove, listening, until two other people materialised out of nowhere: James Potter and Sirius Black. We waited in shock as James quietly said a password to the portrait, which swung forward to reveal a hole in the wall.

"What on earth just happened?" Mandy whispered after the boys had disappeared behind the portrait.

"They must have an Invisibility Cloak," I said. "Ugh, I'm so jealous."

Mandy raised her eyebrows. "But now we know where their common room is… and the password."

I grinned. We had a definite opportunity for retaliating mischief, something I had long wanted to do.

Not that the school needed any more mischief; James, Sirius, and their best friends Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew were Hogwarts' lead troublemakers, infamous for their tricks played on the school, especially on Slytherins. But now we had a chance to get back at them. Mandy and I decided we wouldn't let that chance pass by.

We hadn't officially planned anything out, but two days later, when we went down to the Great Hall for breakfast, Mandy looked uncharacteristically smug. "What did you do?" I asked suspiciously. "Did you go over to Gryffindor Tower…?" I scanned the Gryffindor table. Nothing seemed odd, although Sirius wasn't sitting by his girlfriend; in fact the latter was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly it dawned on me. "Did you play some sort of prank on Kristen? That wasn't part of the plan! I thought we were only going to do something to the boys."

The details were revealed at that moment, when a group of chattering girls came in, surrounding a girl with green hair, whose face was hidden in her hands. Mandy giggled and watched excitedly. Kristen walked to the Gryffindor table, where Sirius saw her hair and laughed. They got into an argument, and I noticed that Mandy was even more pleased. My guess was that Kristen thought Sirius had done it. In the end, Sirius's hair had been turned purple and he was sitting next to her anyway.

Mandy's gleeful smile dropped off her face, and I turned to her and said, "You were trying to make them break up! You're horrible! She never did anything to you. Although I have to say that was pretty lame."

After our first class that day, which was Transfiguration, Mandy and I came up with a delightful scheme to play a trick on those notorious pranksters James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter – after all, as I insisted, there was need to involve anyone but the idiots who pranked Slytherins.

So, late that night, after we had finished our work (however distractedly it was done), we snuck into the Gryffindor common room and hung Slytherin banners everywhere, then up into the boys' dormitory and carefully Levitated all the beds up so they were touching the ceiling. Mandy cast another charm that would hold the beds up there until morning. They might figure out who had done it, but they couldn't prove it.

The next day at breakfast, we found the Great Hall transformed into a barn with four long hay bales instead of tables. There appeared to be a cow munching on the Slytherin hay bale. So the Gryffindor boys had woken up early, and gotten away with something else… I just hoped they had all hit their heads on the ceiling when they woke up, and had trouble getting the beds down.

As our plan had obviously not made enough of an impression, Mandy, Charlotte, and I decided we needed to do much better. Over the next week we played some stealthy tricks on Gryffindor, perhaps equal in intensity to the pranks the Gryffindors always did on us. The best part was that no one else had figured out who was responsible for it. Hogwarts was constantly going to be subjected to mischief now, and already this week Filch, the caretaker, had been noticeably more grouchy than usual.

* * *

My arms were aching as Mandy, Charlotte, and I walked through the hall on our way to Charms some time later. I was carrying numerous books, each with unfinished homework crammed inside, and my bag was slung over my shoulder. As we turned left around a corner, I saw Elliott Jasper, a rather aggressive fifth-year Slytherin, pointing his wand at a cowering second-year Gryffindor. I made to keep walking, trying to stay out of a fight that was none of my business, but with my eyes on Jasper I tripped over Mandy's foot, landing on my knees and dropping my books and bag with a loud, resounding _THUD_. Quills and ink bottles scattered from my bag.

After such a dramatic entrance, I could hardly just get up and continue walking, so I spoke up. "Leave him alone, Jasper," I said, acting much braver than I felt. Then I stood up, feeling that this would look a lot better than trying to chastise Jasper from the floor where I'd been collecting everything I had dropped.

"Are you standing up for the Mudblood, Hastings?" he sneered. "In case you hadn't noticed, you aren't a prefect and this is none of your business. You can just leave, and pick up the stuff you dropped very _gracefully_ over there."

"I'm only standing up for what's right, because unlike you, I have morals. So stop it."

The Gryffindor kid edged away from Jasper, whose attention had diverted to me now. "Look who's getting all high and mighty about defending what's right," said Jasper. "He's a Mudblood, who cares? You think you're too good for Slytherin. The truth is, we're too good for you." Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of other people arriving, and I itched to continue walking.

"Oh, shut up, Jasper," I said. His words hurt, but I didn't show it – although now I wished I'd just kept my mouth shut, because I didn't even know that Gryffindor kid. What was I doing? "Next time you're planning to be nasty, pick on someone your own size. You're three years older than he is and you're almost a foot taller. That only proves you're a coward."

My heart thudding, I knelt down to pick up my quills and ink bottles, which were still lying on the floor, and found myself face to face with James Potter and his three sidekicks. They were all looking down at me curiously. Peter seemed to be in awe of me, but his face just usually looked like that.

"What are _you_ looking at?" I asked, flustered. I was still kneeling on the ground, collecting my books.

"Didn't expect to see another display like that from you, Hastings," said James with a mild look of surprise on his face.

I supposed James was referring to the time about a year ago when I'd hexed Calvin Mulciber in the corridor for making some rude comments about half-bloods. Mulciber's arms were soon covered with angry boils, but unfortunately I hadn't been as subtle as I thought; Professor McGonagall had walked out of a room just at that moment and had been none too impressed with me. Sirius and James had been impressed though – they were walking nearby, and had witnessed the whole thing. Maybe they just enjoyed the fact that a Slytherin got hexed and they hadn't been the ones to get in trouble for it. Regardless, that was around the time they made a distinction in the Slytherins they hexed, and for the most part stopped making my life hell. They'd still never seek my company, but they started acting somewhat friendlier to me.

"I'm full of surprises," I said expressionlessly. "Run along now, you don't want people to think you're willingly talking to a Slytherin."

Sirius looked thoughtful and said, "I think it's pretty clear now that you're not a typical, foul, blood-purity-obsessed, nasty Slytherin."

"Okay, congratulations, that only took you five years to realise," I said. "And was that a compliment or an insult? I really can't tell." So maybe they were coming to see me in a different light now, but honestly all I wanted was for them to get out of my way so I could leave. I had a class to get to… the same class they had, in fact, although they seemed to be in no hurry.

"It didn't take five years," said Peter. "Only four. I'll always treasure the memory of Mulciber's face after you hexed him in front of McGonagall last year." His face took on a dreamy quality, and I unintentionally let out a snort of laughter. Charlotte tugged on my arm, clearly having no desire to stay and talk to the Gryffindors.

I looked down again, and thrust my belongings haphazardly into my bag. "Well, I have to get to Charms," I said quickly. I stood up and tried to leave, but I felt a hand grab my shoulder. "What," I demanded.

It was Remus Lupin. He was holding out my copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_. "You dropped this."

"I dropped a lot of stuff," I said bluntly, probably the stupidest thing I could have said on the occasion, but I couldn't think of anything else. I laughed in spite of myself.

Remus laughed. "You know, I'm sure Sirius really didn't mean to offend you," he said, handing me the book. I looked over at Sirius, and the expression on his face upon hearing Remus's words indicated that he probably _had_ meant to offend me. Remus continued, "I'm sure all of Gryffindor would thank you for sticking your neck out for a Gryffindor instead of going along with someone from your own house. It speaks a lot about you."

"Well, thanks," I said awkwardly. "I'll remember that next time you charm my scarf to turn into a boa constrictor."

"I thought you liked snakes?" Peter asked innocently. "Don't tell me you'd rather have a lion around your neck."

"We could arrange that, if you want," said James.

"Of course you would," I said. "Well, I should get going." I turned to leave and noticed Mandy lingering behind me and staring at Sirius, so I slung my arm through hers and we set off for class. Along the way, Charlotte supplied us with a lengthy treatise on who, in her opinion, were idiots; the list included Jasper, me, and all four of the Gryffindor boys.

By that evening, life had returned to normal, and the Gryffindors were back to largely ignoring us. At the end of the week, notice boards around the school featured announcements for the year's first Hogsmeade weekend in the beginning of October.

Most Hogsmeade trips so far, Mandy, Charlotte and I had stayed as a group. Occasionally Mandy wasn't with us because she'd have a date, and Charlotte and I would walk around on our own, but Mandy was single for the time being. But as we were eating dinner that night, Russell asked Mandy, and she agreed immediately.

As we were walking up to our dormitories afterwards, Mandy told me, "Sorry, Mel – looks like Charlotte and I have deserted you on this one. Are you going to ask anyone to Hogsmeade?"

"No," I said. "Wait, Charlotte has a date? Maybe I'll just hang out with Hector then."

Mandy got a manic glint in her eyes that I disliked. "I'll set you up with someone," she suggested. "It'll be great, I'm good with people."

"Brilliant," I said sardonically, as we pushed open the door to our dormitory. "And define 'good with people', because I'm certain that drooling and staring at Sirius Black doesn't count—" I broke off with a shriek when she elbowed me in the ribs.

Charlotte was sitting on her bed writing a letter home, so I asked her, "Charlotte, are you going to Hogsmeade with anyone?"

"Yeah, with Andrew," she said. My jaw dropped. This was a pretty amazing piece of news coming from the girl who usually told guys who asked her out that they should take a long walk off a short pier. Sweet girl, she was. But maybe she actually liked Andrew. Not that she'd ever tell us; Charlotte didn't discuss feelings. "What about you?"

"Russell," Mandy replied.

"I wasn't asking you," said Charlotte, "I already knew you'd have a boy wrapped around your finger by now." Mandy rolled her eyes. Charlotte grinned and asked me, "What about you, Mel?"

"Nope. Looks like I'm going solo."

Mandy grinned. "I'm going to find someone for her to go with."

"No," I interrupted, "I'm, well, I think I have to… shop for a new broomstick. I need a new one, you see. I'll just go alone, I don't need help deciding which one. Maybe I could get a new quill…"

"All day?" said Mandy, smirking. "Well, great, all you need is someone to shop with… you'll find out." She sat on Charlotte's bed and the two of them began plotting in whispers and every once in a while glancing at me.

"Oh _please_ ," I said, "Let's talk about something else, something interesting? Slytherin versus Ravenclaw Quidditch match in two weeks, do you think we'll win?"

"You're not going alone."

I was fighting a losing battle with my friends, so I decided to get ahead on my homework. It was an ill-fated goal; our other two roommates Alanna and Rachel returned shortly and provided ample distraction. Rachel started playing her tin whistle and I hummed along softly to "My Bonny Lass Disapparated Away" while I idly doodled on my parchment, until the noise got to be too much for the easily-stressed Alanna and she grumbled the whole way out of the dormitory as she returned to the common room to do her homework in peace. By this point, Mandy and Charlotte had apparently abandoned their idea of setting me up with a date, as Mandy was loudly extolling the many virtues of Russell, her date. Charlotte looked bored. My essay was now covered in drawings of birds, so I gave it up as a bad job and thought maybe I was done for the night.


	3. Tricks and Treats, But Mostly Tricks

On Monday, Charlotte decided it was time for us to strike again with another prank. During lunch Mandy set off a Dungbomb as a diversion, while Charlotte and I charmed a wall to suck in all its passersby so that people would stick to the wall. Students passed this wall after exiting the Great Hall, so after lunch on the way to our next class, we discovered thirty students, Filch's abominable cat Mrs Woodhouse, and Professor Flitwick stuck to the Black Hole Wall. It lasted ten minutes, and it was fabulously entertaining to watch people get stuck. Filch hunted for the Gryffindor boys, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to punish them, but they were all stuck to the wall. Class started late as a result of the mishap, so we got extra homework.

Saturday's Hogsmeade trip eventually arrived, and we lined up in the hall to have our names checked off by Filch. He scowled at all of us as we went by, as he disapproved of all things fun. Meanwhile, Mandy kept getting out of the queue to talk to Charlotte, who was ahead of us, so Mandy and I were last out of the castle.

"Now I've lost Russell," said Mandy.

"That's not my fault," I said. "Have fun!" She giddily skipped off to look for Russell, and I looked down the High Street at Scrivenshafts, but it was cold so I decided I'd stop in at the Three Broomsticks first for a butterbeer.

It was warm and crowded inside, and I was glad to be out of the chilly wind. Since all the tables were full, I moved through the crowd and stood leaning against the window, my face pressed against the foggy glass. Few students were outside, and from what I could see of other shops, they looked packed with people. Even if I decided to leave the Three Broomsticks, I wouldn't be able to get inside anywhere. I turned back around to face the shop, and saw Remus Lupin leaning against the wall a few feet away from me.

"Hi," I said blandly. I looked over his shoulder for his three best friends – where one went, the other three were never far behind. But Remus seemed to be alone.

"Having a good day?" he asked, and gave me a friendly smile.

I turned to him, surprised that he was bothering to talk to me in a way that didn't involve either of us growing fangs or jelly-legs, as tended to happen whenever I interacted with one of the Gryffindors. We'd spent the past five years fighting; it was the only way we knew how to act. It was all in good fun, but I couldn't trust Remus's motives at the moment. "What are you doing here?" I asked suspiciously. "I'd have thought you'd be with your friends – you four are practically inseparable."

He laughed. "Well, they're here, actually," he admitted, looking back at a table. The other three boys were sitting there with bottles of butterbeer, watching us with various degrees of confusion on their faces. "They, er…"

"What is this, are you about to hex me for their entertainment? There are other Slytherins in the room, you know. How about one of them. What about Calvin Mulciber, over there? He's a pillock. You'd be doing us all a favour."

"No, no, it's nothing like that," said Remus. "Do I need a reason to be friendly?" When this did nothing to ease my suspicions, he admitted, "The real reason I came up here is because they were trying to get me to ask a girl out."

"Not interested," I said. So, maybe it was impolite. I wasn't a Slytherin for nothing.

But it only made Remus laugh. "Good. I didn't want to go on a date, really," he said. "Sirius said he'd give me twenty Chocolate Frogs if I asked someone. But I saw you standing here alone, looking bored, and I figured I may as well make friends, and get some free Chocolate Frog cards out of it. I'll share the chocolate with you, too, if you want."

His being honest with me about his motives made me more inclined to trust him, as silly as his motives had been. I laughed. "You know, it's a good thing you weren't actually trying to get me to go on a date, because you would definitely have put me off. But I like having friends. We've always had a good time jinxing each other anyway. Want to head out?" I added, as I finished my butterbeer.

"Sure," said Remus. He turned back to look at his friends' table and waved as we walked towards the door. Sirius hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, and Peter was shaking his head in disbelief that Remus would abandon them to hang around with a Slytherin. This was almost as good as hexing them, I thought.

"So, how about Zonko's?" I suggested.

"You planning to wreak some havoc around the school?" he asked as we walked outside. "You don't seem like the mischievous type."

"That's because I'm good at hiding it. _I_ don't get caught."

"Caught? I've never seen you doing anything you could get in trouble for."

"The point is to not be seen. You have a lot to learn, Lupin. You and the rest of that little group of yours. That's why you always end up in detention."

We walked into Zonko's, where it was crowded as usual. Remus shrugged. "Well, I suppose it is a side effect of ingenious pranks – that sometimes they get noticed," he said lightly. "So I've no need to be jealous."

"Oh, do you really want to know?" I said, grinning. "Don't you remember waking up with your beds practically on the ceiling a few weeks ago? And soon after that when the Great Hall's magic ceiling actually rained on everyone? Or, more recently, the wall that people kept getting stuck to? I believe you were caught there… Certainly you remember all those pranks you didn't do but kept getting in trouble for them. Courtesy of yours truly."

 _Well, there goes our secret_ , I thought. _Thanks to me._

My annoyance with myself was alleviated when I saw Remus's face. "That was _you?_ " he asked, stunned.

"With some other Slytherins, yes," I said.

"And to think that all those times I could have taken points away from Slytherin," said Remus. "I should have done, especially after that horrifying display of green and silver in our common room. I should have known it was you."

"Go ahead, prefect, give me a detention. It was well worth it." I picked up a Fanged Frisbee, and examined it nonchalantly. "But watch out, because we Slytherins just might upstage you and take your title as most ingenious pranksters."

Remus walked with me through the shop, and we talked about other entertaining ways to make Filch angry, including pranks, loud singing, and chasing his cat Mrs Woodhouse – which Remus informed me was especially entertaining while wearing an Invisibility Cloak. As we paid for our merchandise, Remus said, "We should have a prank competition. Whoever does the best pranks and doesn't get caught wins." He had a mischievous glint in his eyes that I had never seen before; usually it was James and Sirius who came up with the terrible ideas. But maybe Remus was the mastermind behind their _good_ ideas.

" _Why_ in Merlin's name are you a prefect?" I asked. "Oddly enough, I thought prefects were supposed to stop this kind of behaviour. Dumbledore must have been insane to think you'd maintain order in the school."

"Dumbledore is not insane, Hastings. So are you chickening out?" He grinned.

"No," I said hesitantly. I had a feeling one group would have the cleverer tricks, and the other would evade capture by Filch. It was hopeless, really. "Okay, we'll do it. Ooh, you just wait till Dumbledore finds out what the exemplary prefect has been up to…"

He just smiled knowingly, as if he was privy to secret prank information that I didn't have. "You lot want to go first, then? Tomorrow?"

"Who's going to be the judge? We need someone neutral."

"Well, we'd play the pranks on all of Hogwarts, obviously. So whoever's prank is witnessed by the most people is the winner."

"It's a deal."

* * *

Remus and I spent the day wandering through all the shops of Hogsmeade, staying out of the cold wind as much as possible. We were talking about Professor McGonagall's most recent Transfiguration assignment when I suddenly realised how late it was.

"Not that I dislike your company, but we should be heading back," I said.

"Right," he realized, and started to walk back to the castle. "Well this was fun, thanks for joining me."

"No problem. Hey by the way, you'll be supporting Slytherin in the Quidditch match on Saturday, right?"

"When hell freezes over," he supplied with a friendly smile.

"I'd say that's likely, given how cold it is," I said. "So here, you'll need this for Saturday." I took off my scarf and threw it around his neck.

We reached the castle and went our separate directions. Remus went up the stairs toward Gryffindor Tower; I went down to the Slytherin dungeon. When I opened the door I nearly ran into a couple snogging – it was Mandy and Russell. Awkwardly I tried to sneak around them, but Mandy turned and withdrew herself, her cheeks slightly pink.

"Er, hi," I said, backing out through the door again. "Sorry. Er, I was just going to leave, anyway. I left my – erm, my scarf outside, I'll go and get it, see you later—" I closed the door, which turned back into a bare stretch of stone wall. _Now what?_

I started to walk back out the way I had come, but the door opened again. "Hi," said Mandy. "I want to talk to you. I was waiting for you to get back."

"Right, looked like it," I said sarcastically. "What about Russell? You can't just—"

"He went upstairs, it's fine, he doesn't care. So…"

"Well," I said, "you… obviously had a great time."

"Yeah. What about you? How was your solo adventure in Hogsmeade?"

"Well, I met up with Remus Lupin in the Three Broomsticks, and we're friends now, I think."

"I see," she said.

"Oh, and we have to do a prank tomorrow."

"I'm always up for that," said Mandy, rubbing her hands together. "Let's find Charlotte and get started!"

We found Charlotte in the dormitory, playing Exploding Snap with Alanna Travers, another of our roommates. "Char, put that away," I said, "We have some scheming to do."

Alanna looked up at our mischievous faces, then to Charlotte, and raised her eyebrows. Charlotte grinned and said, "How wonderful, you can be our new recruit!"

"I don't know," she said evasively. "Well actually anything _you_ three are planning, I don't think I want to be a part of it. You're going to get in trouble…"

"All right, suit yourself," said Charlotte. "Oh, by the way, you never heard a word of this."

"Oh, I won't tell," she said. "Be careful, I don't want Slytherin losing a hundred points because of you."

"Fear not, my fair friend," said Mandy with a grin. "We're experts."

We all sat on my bed and closed the hangings, and I informed them of our situation. We decided that our prank should be as messy as possible, because that was sure to be noticed. So we formed an excellent plan: in the morning, we would paint a large animated mural on a wall which we would enchant to blow hot air at anyone who walked by. Beforehand, I would set off some Dungbombs on the opposite side of the school to lure Filch out of the way, and then I would meet Charlotte and Mandy to start painting. Then we would all quickly leave the area. It was expertly planned.

* * *

None of us got much sleep that night. As we saw the horizon growing lighter with pink streaks, Charlotte and Mandy headed for a first floor hallway, while I got a bag of Dungbombs for a diversion and crept off towards the sixth floor. When I reached the end of my corridor, I set off a dozen Dungbombs, then slunk through a tapestry and down to the first floor near a broom closet to join my friends.

Mandy and Charlotte had five buckets of paint out and had started their work. They had painted the outline of a dragon and were working on colouring it in, so I joined them, pointing my wand at a bucket of green paint and watching the jet of paint sail up to the wall. The dragon began to take shape, and as we finished it, it began to flap its wings and move along the wall. Then we began our charms to make it breathe fire at all passersby.

But before we had finished, Filch's cat Mrs Woodhouse showed up, watching us with suspicious yellow eyes as I painted a nearby gargoyle green just for the fun of it. "Open that door, Mandy," said Charlotte. "We can't have Filch show up just yet."

Mandy opened the door to the broom closet. Charlotte herded Mrs Woodhouse into the closet, and I heard Mandy mutter something as she closed the door again. Then the gargoyle I had been painting decided to spit green paint all over me.

"In case you were thinking about it, don't paint the gargoyles," I informed Mandy and Charlotte, and they laughed to see me dripping with green.

Just then, we were interrupted by someone else: Peeves the poltergeist. His sole aim was always to increase chaos, which usually involved making large messes, or drawing large crowds of people – essentially what we were doing at the moment, minus the crowd. At least for the moment.

"Whee!" Peeves hollered. "Messy, messy, all covered in paint, if someone finds you you'll probably faint!" He concluded his poem by knocking over a stone bust of a Cyclops, which crumbled to the floor, its eye continuing to blink mournfully at us. Then Peeves swooped away, doing somersaults in the air and cackling. I heard some footsteps coming from down the hall – it sounded like Peeves was drawing his usual crowd, or maybe people were just coming up to breakfast now. What great timing.

"Time to go," I said to my friends. We Vanished our paint buckets and hurried away from the wall, although I was still covered in green paint. When we reached a corner, we stopped so I could quickly clean the paint off myself, and then we doubled back and joined the group of students headed to breakfast, ready to walk by our finished mural looking like innocent bystanders.

The group we were walking with suddenly halted, laughing and pointing at the new addition to Hogwarts' décor, watching the dragon flying along the wall. A sizeable crowd assembled before the dragon opened its mouth and released a blast of fire: spectacular reds and oranges swept along the wall, and hot air filled the corridor, almost as if a real dragon had breathed real fire upon us; the people closest to the wall got splashed with some orange paint. Several students screamed in delight (and probably some in terror as well). Mandy, Charlotte and I laughed gleefully from our spot in the middle of the crowd. And then, we finally saw Filch arriving, who shrieked at the sight of the animated mural, the fallen stone Cyclops, and a nearby painting the dragon had singed.

Filch glared back at all the students, his eyes popping out of his head. "What have you done, you miscreants?" He pointed his finger at two third-year Hufflepuffs who had just been laughing loudly. They immediately stopped. Filch turned his gaze to other students, examining their faces so he could try to spot the guilty one.

A bleating noise sounded from the closet door, and Filch, baffled, opened it. Out walked a thin gray sheep with lamplike eyes. Filch shrieked again, and a roar of laughter erupted when the Hogwarts students recognized the noisy sheep as Mrs. Woodhouse. Mandy grinned at me.

"Brilliant Transfiguration work," I whispered to her. "But he's going to kill us."

Filch continued to stare around at everyone. His eyes lingered for a while on James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, whom I was pleased to see laughing hysterically. But then Peeves returned at that moment to sing more songs, and Filch yelled and cursed at him, holding Peeves responsible for all the chaos. We had pulled off an amazing prank, and gotten away with it. It would be a good day.

It wasn't so great for Filch, though. After the paint had been removed from the walls, and the sheep had easily been returned to its original, repulsive state as Mrs Woodhouse (thanks to Professor McGonagall, who showed up rather unimpressed with the situation and effectively dispersed the crowd), Filch was still in a nasty temper. He tried to punish a first-year for sneezing in the hall. Another student was berated for tripping; Filch said the spilled ink was vandalism of the floor and that the scattered parchment cluttered the hall, which could be dangerous. I purposely avoided Filch as much as possible, lest he discover my guilty conscience.

The rest of the day was not quite as successful; my lack of sleep from prank planning became evident after a few hours, and I even nearly fell asleep in Herbology, which was my favourite class. I was tremendously glad I didn't have Divination anymore, or I would certainly have fallen asleep in that dark, stuffy room. But somehow I managed to stay awake for all my classes, even if my notes were scrawled and messy, and I got extra homework for being somewhat vacant in class. But I didn't care today. Today was perfect.

* * *

 **A/N: What do you think so far? Let me know in a review! Thanks for reading :)**


	4. Counterstroke

After Potions, Remus joined me on our way out of class. "That was marvellous," he said, smiling. "And you obviously didn't get caught…"

"Yeah. Nearly did, though. So will we see your stuff tomorrow morning? Where will it be?"

"You'll see," he said. "You know, it actually took a lot of convincing to get the others to join, which I wasn't expecting. I think they were just against having a _friendly_ competition with Slytherins. But you know how they are with pranks, it's like second nature; I think the opportunity to create a mess for the entire school won out after all." He glanced off to the side. "Speaking of which, I should probably stop James and Sirius before they get too carried away."

I looked over. Snape's head was twice its normal size and his arms had grown feathers. I rolled my eyes. "It never ends, does it," I said.

"Well, they've gotten much better since last year."

"Have they?" I asked. "It feels like every day they've got a new hex to practice on Slytherins."

"Well you know, they think it's their calling in life to put Slytherins in their place." He smiled apologetically.

"They just thrive on being the center of attention. And I don't know why you're saying 'they', because… well, don't you four do everything as a group?" I laughed.

Remus smiled. "That's true, but at least I talk to you. I keep telling James and Sirius you're not that bad. I think they believe me, but they don't let on about it because they just like hexing Slytherins."

"Well that's wonderful. I guess it'll stop by the time we've left Hogwarts. Unless they decide to stalk us after Hogwarts?"

"You never know," he said. I laughed.

Remus ended up just standing by as James and Sirius finished with Snape. I told them once to cut it out, but all three of them ignored me, so I just shrugged. It wasn't like Snape didn't deserve it; every other time I saw Snape, he was inventing some cruel spell to test out on the Gryffindors. Last year he'd even come up with one that cut James's face like a sword.

This time, James and Sirius had the upper hand, until Snape cast two curses in quick succession. James dropped his wand and grabbed his wrist in pain; his entire arm looked red and burnt. Sirius fell to the floor, immobile. But they deserved it just as much as Snape did.

As Snape turned away, satisfied, he spied me standing next to Remus. "What are you doing with _them?_ " he asked acidly, a cold look in his dark eyes, like black holes. His eyes darted between me and Remus, and I could feel the last of our bonds of friendship fading away.

"No – I'm just…" I didn't know what to say, and stopped. I was treading on thin ice, and if I said the wrong thing I'd offend either an old friend or a new potential friend.

"She's just standing here," said Remus when I faltered. "I was asking her about Transfiguration. I assume she doesn't need your permission for that?"

Snape's lip curled. As James and Sirius stood up, Snape pulled out his wand again, but then he looked up at something down the hall, sighed, and put his wand away. He gave us all one more menacing look before he slunk off with Lester Avery, Charlotte's brother, just as Professor McGonagall walked by. Snape wouldn't dare jinx a fellow student in front of a teacher, particularly one as unforgiving as her.

The action now over, Sirius turned to face me. "So I hear you went on a date with Remus here," he said, a very calculating expression on his haughty features, as if he were trying to assess whether I was good enough for his friend. I would normally have been content to walk off without talking to him, but he was regarding me in a way that felt like a challenge, like he was daring me to argue.

"It wasn't a date," I pointed out. "Anyway, it was your idea, if I heard correctly. Didn't know you were a matchmaker as well as a troublemaker."

Sirius raised his eyebrows. "I made no matches. There were loads of girls there, I thought he'd have the sense to pick someone a bit more pleasant." He shook his head, and Peter's eyes widened as he looked between Sirius and me expectantly.

"What does that mean?" I insisted. "I'm not an unpleasant person. You mean you were expecting a Gryffindor, and you're disappointed that he became friends with a Slytherin instead."

"Calm down," said Remus, putting his hands up between us. "This isn't worth fighting about."

"No," I agreed, looking down at my feet again. "Thanks Remus, I'll see you later, I'm going to the library."

I walked to the library to get some work done. I sat down at an empty table and spread my books and parchment out in front of me. I had barely been working five minutes when I heard someone approach my table. It was Elliott Jasper, and with him were two other fifth-year Slytherins who spent a lot of time with him: Darian Wilkes and Regulus Black.

Regulus was Sirius's brother. The two of them looked very similar, but they could not have been more different people. They acted like they didn't know each other. And while Sirius was the charming, rebellious Gryffindor, Regulus was as Slytherin as you could be. Apparently the only thing they had in common was that they both disliked me. So now that I'd just had a quarrel with one Black, along came another to ruin my day. I tried to go back to working, but Jasper stood right up against my table, his face twisted by a slight frown, while the two others just looked bored.

"What, Jasper?" I demanded. "Can't you see I'm working?"

"You can… take a break," he said slowly, still smirking. "You've obviously been working _so_ hard." Behind his crossed arms, I could see his wand ready in his hand.

"Careful," I said icily. "No hexing in the library. Madam Pince is right there, so whatever you're thinking is stupid. You'll lose points for Slytherin."

"She's currently dealing with an escaped book from the Restricted Section."

"And I suppose you had _nothing_ to do with that," I said.

Jasper shrugged. "You suppose wrong," he said. At least he was honest.

Just as I was wondering if they were going to do anything, I suddenly found myself helplessly hanging upside down in the air by one foot. I hurriedly pinned my arms to my sides so my robes wouldn't fly over my head. I could hear Jasper laughing, and I was sure my face was red in fury. I looked at Wilkes and Regulus. Both were laughing now, and Wilkes had his hand in his pocket, as if he were about to pull out a wand. "What is this, three on one?" I exclaimed. "That's not fair! Why are you doing this?"

"Because your interference on behalf of Mudbloods two weeks ago made me look stupid," said Jasper. He let me down, though it seemed like the action was more out of boredom than anything, and I began to put away my parchment and ink. When I saw Calvin Mulciber approach and stand alongside Jasper, appreciating his spellwork, I hurried faster - Jasper wasn't nice, but he wasn't dangerous like Mulciber. I shoved my books back in my bag as they all stood there watching me like vultures, and then I sped out of the library. Footsteps behind me indicated that they were following.

"You should watch yourself," said Jasper evenly, once we were outside the library doors, and I realised that I'd probably been better off inside the library. "You don't want people to think you're a blood traitor."

I snorted. "I can't be a blood traitor if I'm not even a pureblood, can—" I stopped, gasping, when there came an immense pressure on my right elbow, as if it were being twisted, and I grabbed it with my left hand. Nothing looked physically wrong with it – and then I noticed Mulciber pointing his wand at me. Tears sprang to my eyes as the pain intensified in my arm; it felt like it was breaking. "S – stop," I gasped finally. Wilkes laughed, and Jasper and Regulus just watched with interest as Mulciber demonstrated his newest spell to them.

But with an incredible stroke of luck, Lily Evans and Sirius Black happened to turn the corner into the corridor at that precise second, and, seizing the opportunity, I cried out through gritted teeth, "Hi, Lily! Good afternoon!"

She glanced over at me where I stood holding my arm and grimacing, and at my four housemates surrounding me, then told Mulciber and the others in her most authoritative Prefect's voice to desist their behaviour at once. She looked livid. And finally the pain went away as suddenly as it had come; I sunk down to sit on the floor, leaning against the wall.

"I'm taking twenty points from Slytherin," Lily said icily. I groaned inwardly from my place on the floor, hating Mulciber and Jasper. Slytherin was my house too! "And I will be speaking to your Head of House about a detention."

As they turned to leave, I stuck my foot out suddenly and Jasper stumbled over it. It wasn't much, but it certainly made me feel better. But when I glanced up again, I noticed that a small crowd had accumulated. I stood up quickly, then made a business of tidying my bag while avoiding all the eyes around me.

It wasn't unheard of for me to get into a fight in the corridor. A couple of years ago I'd fought with Archie Summerby, a Hufflepuff who was two years ahead of me. Hufflepuffs generally didn't get into fights, but he was a gentleman about it; he apologised to me immediately afterwards, and I, caught off guard, had then apologised as well. Somehow, we'd become friends after that, and I'd been quite sorry to see him leave last year when he graduated.

No one had been hurt in my fight with Archie; it was loud and spirited and then suddenly over, with no hard feelings. But this was different, now; it had hardly been a fight at all, and I was left feeling small and weak. Not to mention the fact that there were actually quite a few people whispering around me.

"Are you okay, Hastings?" I heard a girl's voice, and looked to see the Head Girl, Hufflepuff Claudia Quirke, standing beside me, her brown eyes wide. "I saw what happened, I came into the corridor just after Lily," she said. "You're brave to stand up to Mulciber like that."

I shrugged, brushing the dust off my robes and rather disliking the attention. "I'm all right. Thanks." I offered her a smile.

"You're pretty cool for a Slytherin," she said. "Archie Summerby used to talk about you."

"Hopefully he said good things," I said, with a hint of laughter.

"Of course," she promised, grinning. "Hufflepuffs only say good things." She paused, then to my utter surprise, gave me a hug. "Stay strong. I'll be keeping an eye on Mulciber this year." And she walked off down the corridor with a parting smile, leaving me feeling rather better.

Hufflepuffs were a great crowd – always there with a smile. I was going to miss Archie this year; he was the one who had showed me the secret of where the Hogwarts kitchens were (right next to the common room of those lucky Hufflepuffs), and I would always treasure those occasional evenings sitting in the round, cosy Hufflepuff common room where he'd strum on his guitar and I'd sing, often along with a few others, and no one cared in the slightest about House divisions. He'd taught me Muggle folk songs, and I'd taught him some Hobgoblins songs. Now he was off doing something cool – travelling the world, perhaps.

I turned to walk the other direction, and was startled to see Sirius standing there; I couldn't fathom why he was still there. I'd have expected Sirius to dash off to meet his mates long before this. "Er… Black? Do you need something?"

He looked briefly down the corridor again before asking me, "You sure you're all right? You're not hurt or anything?"

Nodding, I replied, "I'm fine, yeah. But why all the sudden concern for my well-being?"

"I'm not concerned," said Sirius. "Well, not about you, anyway."

"Good, thanks, that makes me feel loads better," I said sarcastically.

Sirius was silent for a moment, and I thought the conversation was over. But then he asked me softly, "Does Regulus do that a lot?"

I rolled my eyes. "Why don't you ask him yourself? He's your brother."

Sirius's forehead creased slightly into a frown, and his grey eyes looked stony. I sighed. "He doesn't usually," I said, relenting. "At least he never starts anything. He just goes along with whatever Jasper's doing."

Again, Sirius remained silent, just watching me critically. Any hint of caring he'd displayed a few seconds ago when he'd approached me was now gone, locked behind a mask of indifference. I didn't really know what to say anymore, which was odd – I usually had something to say about everything. But Sirius suddenly stepped back, as if he thought he was standing too close to me. "I'm sorry they did that," he muttered, and then walked off down the corridor.

"Thanks, Sirius," I said gently, though I wasn't entirely sure what I was thanking him for. Perhaps Claudia's geniality had rubbed off on me. And so finally, I left the corridor, musing on what an odd day it had been; everything from disaster at almost being caught, to elation upon the results of our prank, to intimidation from Jasper, to appreciation of my other classmates. Thank goodness every day wasn't such a bumpy ride.


	5. A Message and a Mess

I woke up to a great deal of commotion, screeching, and things falling over. At least that was what it sounded like. I opened my eyes and sat up immediately, grabbing the edge of the hangings of my four-poster bed and pulling it forcefully aside. Mandy and Alanna were standing right next to my bed, their arms over their heads as a small owl flapped above them, its talons extended. Its haphazard flapping had knocked the lava lamp off my bedside table, as well as most of my striped stones.

When the owl saw me, it stopped its antics; it landed on the side of my bed and held out its leg, to which a letter was tied. I gaped at my roommates, completely nonplussed.

Mandy spoke up. "It was at the window just now, pecking at it and going mad, so we opened the window to let it in. When it couldn't get through your bed hangings, it went after us instead. That letter must be something important, I guess."

"Er… okay," I said, and took the letter from the owl, which was clicking its beak impatiently. After I'd untied the letter, the owl soared dizzily out the open window.

Alanna walked back to her bed and sank down upon it, her hands in her tousled blonde hair. "This is the most stressful morning I've _ever_ experienced," she said. "I woke up thinking I'd have to worry about Charms, but I almost got mauled by a rogue owl. And would someone close that bloody window? It's freezing in here!"

I ignored her and unrolled the bit of parchment, and Mandy jumped on my bed to try and read the letter over my shoulder.

"Who's it from?" she asked.

I recognized the perfect handwriting at once. It was from my older brother. "Nathan," I told Mandy, who slid off my bed to let me read the letter. I hadn't talked to Nathan in a long time.

 _Melanie,  
How's school going? You haven't written for a while. Hope everything is great at school. I'm busy with my Ministry job, of course, but I'm enjoying it a lot. Dad's been telling me I spend too much time at work. The Dark Lord is gaining power so I should be focusing on more important matters than the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, because things are changing... I've found my place now, and I think Mum and Dad are finally beginning to choose a side in all this mess. Do you like my new owl? She's new, her name is Bellona. She gets lost sometimes, hope she got there all right!  
Write soon_

 _Love,_  
 _Nathan_

It was true; with all my assignments, I had completely forgotten to write to my brother. I smiled, glad he was still maintaining correspondence. Then all of a sudden panic struck me like lightning, and my smile faded. He was actually choosing a side in the war? Which side did he mean? Given Nathan's mention of the 'Dark Lord', and Dad's distrust of Muggles, I worried what exactly Nathan was getting involved in. I hadn't the faintest idea how to respond to the letter, so I dressed quickly, grabbed the parchment in one hand and headed for the door.

"Wait," said Mandy. "Where are you going?" She glanced anxiously at me. "Do you want to talk?"

I looked behind her and saw my other roommates still chatting and laughing. "Um, I don't know…"

"Let's go for a walk," suggested Mandy, linking her arm through mine and leading me out of the dormitory.

This early in the morning, no one stopped us. We walked out onto the castle grounds, the brisk wind whipping my hair around, chilling my face. I pulled my jacket a little tighter around myself, and sighed slowly, watching the little white cloud of my breath linger in the cold air a few moments before dissipating. I wished I had my scarf, but it was currently residing in the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, and one of them had probably put a hex on it in case they ever felt like giving it back.

"So what happened?" Mandy asked cautiously. I handed her the crumpled parchment in my fist and said nothing. I slipped my hands in my coat pockets and looked resolutely at the frosty grass I was walking on. We continued in silence as Mandy read the letter, until she said, "So?"

"So, there's something fishy about it." Mandy looked at the letter again. I said, "I know this sounds silly, but… what if my parents are involved with the war? He's never cared before, but it says there, Dad's telling Nathan there are more important things than work, even though Nathan works with the law enforcement. Nathan's job is pretty important, especially with all the Dark stuff that keeps happening nowadays!"

Mandy looked thoughtful. "I suppose," she said. "But, I don't think so. You and Nathan have always been really close, you know he would never support Voldemort. And as for your parents… I don't know, it's possible."

"Do you think I should do anything, or am I just getting paranoid about nothing?"

"Well, you could write back and—"

"Oh yeah, I'll say, 'Dear Nathan, Are you working for Voldemort? Love, Melanie.' Yup, a good letter, right there." I said sardonically.

"Something a little more subtle, maybe…"

I sighed. "What would I do if they were involved? I would be kicked out of the school; they don't want a Death Eater's daughter here… Mandy, be honest, do you think anyone in my family is working for Voldemort?"

Mandy was the only person I dared mention Voldemort's name to. It had started to become taboo to say the name; instead people referred to him as 'You-Know-Who,' and there were people like Dad who called him 'The Dark Lord', but those both seemed like unnecessarily presumptuous titles to me.

"It's hard to say," she admitted softly as I braced myself for bad news, "but… it wouldn't be surprising if they'd finally picked a side, after the war has been going on this long."

I nodded stoically, and Mandy continued in a lighter tone. "Don't spend time worrying about it, though, because you don't know. Write to Nathan as if nothing happened, see if he seems different. Oooh, tell him how many muggle-born friends you have. See how he reacts to that!"

I forced a laugh. Mandy was trying her best to cheer me up. Well, I would at least find out when I went home for Christmas. It was a long time until then, but the weather certainly didn't indicate that. I looked at the lake, which already had a thin layer of ice forming near its banks. The middle was still rippling with the frigid wind.

"Let's go inside," said Mandy. "I'm cold. Plus, we have to see Remus's friends' prank. I wonder if everyone else is awake yet."

I felt better after getting my worries out, and walked with Mandy into the Great Hall in better spirits. The first thing I noticed was how dark it seemed, but how nice and flowery it smelled. The windows were entirely covered with a thick layer of green vines. As I watched, the vines lengthened and spread immensely. It was like it had been sped up about a hundred times faster than normal. And there were lots of colourful blossoms, too; I noticed a lot of lilies scattered along the Gryffindor table. That must have been James' idea – as if he thought that Lily would approve of their behaviour more if he did that. I glanced at the other tables, which were each covered with their individual flower type, and winding around the Slytherin table was some prickly thing that must have been poisonous. Apart from the lethal-looking Slytherin vine, everything looked almost pretty. Which was nice, but what kind of prank was _that?_

Mandy and I stayed there for a few moments, taking in our surroundings. I looked up, and immediately a huge clump of flowers fell from the ceiling and landed on Mandy and me; they spewed out pollen everywhere, causing me to sneeze. Mandy picked up some flowers, but then distrustfully held them out at arm's length. "Come on, let's go," I said after she had examined them a bit, and we headed towards the door, the ever-increasing vines tangling around the doorway threatening to trip us. As soon as we got into the corridor, Mandy shoved her flowers into my hand, and bent down to tie her shoe. I looked around as I waited for her, and was surprised when I saw the Gryffindor boys standing in a clump about five feet away from us.

"Well, look who it is," I said.

Mandy looked up. "Ha! Caught in the act! Not as good as you thought you were, huh?" She laughed, and stood up.

They turned around to face us, surprise evident in their faces as well.

"So, this is your rubbish attempt at a prank?" Mandy asked. "Flowers?"

"You're calling this rubbish?" asked James. "You may not have noticed how fast these vines grow. And if you're not aware, these are the best types of sneeze-inducing flowers you'll ever find, because they drop pollen everywhere. Filch particularly hates them."

"How do you know what flowers Filch likes?" asked Mandy with a smirk.

"Because he gives flowers to Filch all the time," I supplied.

"Well, of course. You don't?" James played along. "The man does so much work here, and is hardly appreciated for it."

I snorted in laughter. James and his three friends were without a doubt the primary reason Filch had such a difficult job.

"So if you'll notice," said Sirius, "our prank just keeps getting better! Wait till an hour from now." He laughed. "And it's much better than yours because everyone goes to the Great Hall in the morning, but not everyone stops by the broom closets."

Yeah, well, he'd probably know – he'd have spent enough time in broom closets with various girls through the years, as a broom closet afforded a bit of privacy making it an ideal place for a snog.

"So what do you think?" Remus asked. "We have made this entire room unusable for the day, and yours just affected a closet."

"Fascinating, but I still think we won," I said.

"That is still to be determined," said Remus, smirking.

"So why are you all just hanging around?" Mandy asked. "Are you waiting for Filch to come by? That's stupid, he'll catch you."

"That's none of your business, is it?" said Sirius. He had a mischievous glint in his eyes, like always.

"Fine," I said, and spun around to leave, but a vine had curled out of the Great Hall and wound itself around my ankle, and I tripped, scattering Mandy's stupid flowers all over Sirius's feet. Why did I always end up on the floor?

"Sorry," I muttered irritably as I stood up, kicking a few of the flowers aside.

"It's all right, I understand you can't help falling for me," said Sirius, grinning at his own cleverness. "But you know, you could have just given the flowers to me, you didn't have to bow down at my feet."

I snorted. "You idiot, I would never give you flowers unless they were poison oak."

I left the flowers on the floor; Mandy could pick them up if she really wanted them. All I wanted was to get away from that vicious vine in the Great Hall as soon as possible, which had made breakfast an impossible task in the overgrown, jungle-like Hall. I would probably go to the kitchens instead. But when I turned around to tell Mandy, I saw Filch instead.


	6. Deception and Detention

I gasped – we'd been caught. Mandy was staring at Filch, wide-eyed, mouth hanging open, while Filch had a hideous grin on his face; he looked almost insane with glee at catching us. He cackled upon seeing our faces and looked down at his mangy cat, Mrs. Woodhouse. "Excellent, my sweet, we caught them," he said in that creepy voice he always used when talking to his cat. Filch and Mrs. Woodhouse were like an inseparable, unpleasant duo of rule-enforcement.

When I whirled around to see what the Gryffindors were doing now that they had been caught, I was astounded; they were nowhere to be seen. How could they have got away so fast? Unless they had brought their Invisibility Cloak with them, just in case? They had probably thrown it on just as they glimpsed Filch, but he hadn't seen them because they had been near the wall and Mandy and I were in the doorway in front of him.

I reached out with an arm, waving it around to see if it hit something solid, then moved farther out into the corridor, until Filch growled, "This way!"

"But the Gryffindors were there too," I insisted, pointing where I'd last seen them. "They were just there!"

But Filch ignored me, after a quick sweep of the area and not seeing anyone. "She's delusional, too," he said to Mrs. Woodhouse, ignoring me. He returned to his usual cantankerous tone for students. "Come with me, someday you'll learn to follow the rules."

"You are SO not getting away with this!" I yelled once more down the empty corridor, and marched off in the other direction, behind Filch. Mandy walked alongside me, fuming.

"Where did they go?"

I sighed. "I'll bet anything they were there the whole time, hiding in their Invisibility Cloak."

Filch dragged us along until we came to his office, where he looked lovingly at the chains and manacles in a corner, which he had in case he was ever allowed to use them on students, something he'd probably always wanted to do. He then opened a drawer of a cabinet and eagerly got out a card and began writing all over it. "You need a detention, definitely," he said. " _Crime:_ wreaking havoc, damaging the school property…" He still had the same leering expression. "How about 8:00 on Friday. You'll go to the Trophy Room, and shine up every single trophy. Without magic, of course."

"We didn't—" Mandy began, but was cut off by Filch.

"What's that?" he demanded, his eyes bugging out again, and pointing at Mandy's pocket. A bit of parchment was sticking out. Mandy clapped her hand over her pocket and stole a glance at me. It was my letter.

"If you must know, it's a letter from my brother," I said, calmly. I sounded a lot calmer than I felt, because I certainly didn't want Filch reading any of that Dark Lord stuff.

"It's a piece of evidence of your conspiring, it is. You're lying! Hand it over!" He reached out a hand to take it.

"It's not!" insisted Mandy. "We had nothing to do with—"

"All right, sorry," I lied, "we did it, we'll serve our detention at 8:00, can we go now?" The sooner we left, the better.

Filch looked at his collection of manacles again, muttering to himself about how we'd be expelled, and then dismissed us.

"We won't be expelled," Mandy whispered to me. "James and Sirius are still in school, and I'm sure they know this office like the back of their hand by now."

We ran back to the Great Hall corridor to see if anyone was there. People had to be awake by now. All we saw, however, was Professors McGonagall and Flitwick standing inside, getting rid of all the invasive vines. A few students were clustered in the doorway, but not many.

Suddenly I laughed aloud. The results of the competition had been entirely the opposite of what I had anticipated. Our prank had received all the attention, and theirs hadn't – it was being removed (with difficulty), and most students hadn't seen it yet. And, they had escaped Filch while we got caught. I would never have seen that coming.

Breakfast would probably be delayed, so Mandy and I headed back to the common room. I wondered what Charlotte would think when she learned of our mishap.

* * *

The tale of us getting caught spread like wildfire – partially due to Filch muttering gleefully about it all day, and partly due to the Gryffindors, I was certain. Charlotte had thought it was awful, and I knew she felt bad for us, but was glad it wasn't her. In the hallway between classes, Mandy and I were often stopped by random people from every House who wanted to find out what other pranks we had done, and I got very annoyed of the attention after a while. We did notice that the Gryffindor boys avoided us as much as was humanly possible.

Mandy and I walked to our seats on the far side of the Transfiguration classroom, and at every chance possible we glared across the room at James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter – of course, they never happened to be looking. But I was forced to stop my pursuit when Professor McGonagall asked me a few questions in front of the class, and I had to rely on Mandy whispering answers in my ear.

I returned my focus to the task at hand, which was to turn a rabbit into a vase, and although my vase had ears, it was passable, I thought. After class, Mandy and I followed James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter to confront them at last. They were walking very quickly and we hurried to catch up with them; we ran around them and then stopped, whirling around to face them so they could no longer avoid us.

"Thanks loads for that this morning," I said to the four of them. "It was really sweet of you to disappear and let us get caught for your stupid prank."

James grinned. "Yeah, all right, glad you enjoyed it," he said airily. "We sure did."

"My favourite bit was you swinging your arm like you thought you'd find us that way," said Sirius. "It was a great show for us." He raised his arm and flopped it around in what I assumed was some imitation of myself. He had that arrogant expression on his face again – like he was just so confident in his own charm that he could get away with saying anything.

I scowled, thoroughly unamused. But Mandy snorted. "Laugh it up. You do realise that this all means that we Slytherins won the contest? Because after catching us for your prank, Filch has been nothing but cheerful! You lose."

As realisation dawned on me, I turned to Mandy and grinned too. "Yeah, we did!" I exclaimed, and gave her an enthusiastic high-five. Our victory raised my spirits, and all the excitement made the boys laugh; we all parted agreeing that our prank competition had been the best idea ever.

* * *

Mandy and I were passing the time in detention with her wireless, which was broadcasting a show entitled "A Mix of Magical and Muggle Music", currently a Muggle group called The Who. Shining up all the trophies was taking ages, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. Filch wasn't there; he had left after making sure we showed up and then taking our wands from us, so we were relatively free to do whatever we wanted while we cleaned the trophies.

As Mandy and I were singing along to a song called "The Seeker," which, as it was by a Muggle band, was unfortunately not about Quidditch, we heard the door creak loudly. Mandy turned the music down, because if it was Filch he would probably yell at us for having too much fun. Instead, when I turned around, I saw Remus Lupin standing in the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I felt bad for leaving you out in the hall for Filch to find, so… I don't know, I guess I just needed to say I'm sorry."

I smiled. "Thanks, that's nice of you," I said. "You know, we probably would have done the same thing to you, in your situation, so it's really all right. Since you're here though, you can help us clean these trophies." I thrust a rag and a particularly grimy silver trophy into his hand.

"Cheers." He rolled his eyes and started scrubbing the trophy, leaning against the wall.

"So, Remus," said Mandy, "where are your cohorts? I can't believe they didn't want to join us in this supremely entertaining chore."

"They're playing chess, I believe," he said. "James and Sirius are. Last I checked, Peter was doing his homework, although I doubt he's getting anything done with all the excitement in the common room."

"Speaking of excitement," I said, and cranked the wireless again, filling the room with music as Mandy and I continued through our detention, with the welcome assistance of Remus.

By eleven o' clock, we were almost done; there were just a few more trophies on one last shelf. I was currently shining up one silver trophy to perfection. It was so shiny now it was a perfect mirror. Reflected on it I could see a tired, frowning face surrounded by a wild mess of brown curly hair. The several hours spent cleaning trophies in the room hadn't helped it much either. Behind the reflection of my face I saw another appear.

"Hi Remus," I said.

"It should only be about fifteen more minutes," said Remus. "Don't fall asleep yet, look, we're almost done!"

He walked over to the shelf, and I turned to Mandy, who was still scrubbing away faithfully at an old tarnished silver figurine. "It's been five hours," she said.

Remus looked at his watch. "Well, three actually – but it does feel like five."

"I'm hungry," I said. "Do you think Filch would notice if I Transfigured this Special Award into a pie or something?"

Not that I'd actually be able to. Charms I could handle, but I wasn't the best at Transfiguration. I'd probably get lead poisoning from eating the pie.

"Let's just leave," Mandy suggested. "This has been the stupidest detention ever. But you're right Mel – how often do you think he checks to make sure all the trophies are clean?"

"Brilliant," I said. "And I—"

I was cut off by a loud shriek from Mandy. She was looking directly behind me, eyes wide open, hands covering her mouth, the figurine fallen by her side. I followed her gaze and saw Remus lying on the floor, on his back, motionless. His eyes were open, but he was completely still.

Mandy and I walked cautiously over to where Remus was sprawled. His arm was stiff, and I saw that his right hand was clutched around something golden and blue. I reached out to take a look at it, but Mandy frantically said, "No! Don't touch it! It could be that's how he got this way!"

I walked around to Remus's right side and sat down again. I lifted his right arm and carefully attempted to pry his fingers off the object. "Don't worry, Mandy, I'm just looking," I said. I soon realised the object was a wrist watch, very antique and very beautiful. It had a thin gold band studded with sapphires, and the face had intricately designed numbers and hands, which had probably not worked for centuries. I wondered why it had been hidden in the furthest corner of the trophy room, and whom it had once belonged to. I wanted to take it out of Remus's hand, but it would probably only end up with me being unconscious. And this set me to wondering why this watch was even there in the first place.

I laid Remus's arm back on the floor. "What do we do?" I asked Mandy. She was still staring at his hand.

"What _is_ that thing? What did it do to him?"

"We have to go to Madame Pomfrey," I said. The school matron would know what to do. Even though she was young and had just got the position a few years ago, we had seen that she was very capable.

"Only one of us should," said Mandy, standing up. "You stay with him, I'll go." She paused when she saw my eyes dart over to the watch again. "On second thought, Melanie, maybe _I_ should stay."

"Okay." I stood up and banged the door open, and ran down the hall, not bothering to be quiet. I sprinted to the hospital wing and burst in. "M – Madame Pomfrey," I panted. "Help!"

A few moments later she appeared out of a room in the back, scowling, her frizzy hair undone and dark circles under her eyes. "What is it?" she asked kindly, and I was surprised she sounded so sincere after just having been noisily woken up.

"Remus," I said, still getting my breath back as I began to walk back out again. Madame Pomfrey's eyes widened slightly and her hand twitched, and she quickened her pace towards the door. "In the trophy room, come on!"

I ran back, Madame Pomfrey close behind me. I bashed the wooden door against the wall again when I raced into the trophy room, where Remus was still lying, Mandy kneeling over him. "Madame Pomfrey!" she blurted. "Look, I have no idea what happened but it has something to do with that wristwatch! He's all stiff! He was fine until—"

Madame Pomfrey cut her off. "Let me see." She took out her wand and started waving it and muttering, trying to determine what was wrong. After a while she said, "You ladies run up and tell Dumbledore. I'll take care of this."

Mandy and I hurried out of the room and up to a corridor with a large stone gargoyle on the wall. It led to Dumbledore's office, but I had no idea how to get in.

"I don't know the password!" I said. I looked to Mandy, who shrugged her shoulders, obviously having no idea either. I pounded on the wall as hard as I could, and shouted, "It's important!"

We waited but there was no response. I looked around wildly; there was a portrait just down the hall from the door to the office, and in it were a sleeping knight and a lady in a fine purple dress. "Wake up," I told them, touching the painting. The couple sat up; the startled woman ran out of the frame suddenly, flitting through other portraits down the hall, and the knight stared at me. "Are there portraits in Dumbledore's office that you can access? Can you go tell him to come out?" I asked him frantically.

"At once, my lady," said the knight, rubbing his head, and then vanished out the left side of the frame, opposite where the woman had left.

After a few moments the wall section split in two, opening to reveal a spiral staircase that was slowly revolving downward. The headmaster, Dumbledore, stepped off the staircase and into the hall. The normal twinkle was gone from his blue eyes, and he looked stern. "What is it?"

"A cursed watch," said Mandy, "in the trophy room. Remus Lupin touched it, and, well, he's unconscious right now…"

"Madame Pomfrey is in there," I said.

Dumbledore followed us back to the trophy room. In the meantime, Filch had reappeared, and he stood by the side of the room looking nervous and jumpy. Remus was awake and sitting up, leaning against the wall as he pushed his sandy-coloured hair out of his eyes. The watch lay on the floor, a filthy rag on top of it.

"He was fine once I got that out of his hand," said Madame Pomfrey, pointing to the watch.

"Thank you, Poppy," said Dumbledore. "Do you have any idea how this happened?"

"Well, as you probably suspected, I think it's been cursed, but I don't know what it's doing here. A thing like that in a school…"

I walked over to the watch, picked it up in the disgusting rag, and set it atop a small low shelf. Dumbledore pushed his half-moon glasses up on the bridge of his crooked nose, and bent over to examine the artefact. "Do you have any ideas where this might have come from?" he inquired.

"I've never seen it before," said Filch, his shoulders twitching in a shrug; clearly he was out of his depth. Mandy and I looked at each other, and at Madame Pomfrey, then at Remus who was still sitting on the floor. I couldn't even begin to guess about the watch. Mandy apparently could, though.

"Could it have once belonged to Ravenclaw? The colours, those are Ravenclaw colours."

"Possibly," said Dumbledore. "Although there are no known artefacts that belonged to Ravenclaw, I suppose we could have just found one… but do you think Rowena Ravenclaw's own watch would be in a dusty trophy room?"

I was about to mention that the trophy room was _not_ dusty anymore, it was spotless since we had just spent three hours cleaning it, but I decided that it wasn't the time for that.

"Why would something like that be in the school anyway?" said Mandy. "Maybe it was recently put there, intended for someone to touch it? I don't know who would have done that, though… none of Voldemort's followers could have broken into the castle… Although we really don't know how long it's been there."

"I should have made you a prefect, I like the way you're thinking," said Dumbledore, the twinkle returning to his eyes. Mandy beamed. "Well, I'll take this and speculate," he finished, wrapping the artefact in the rag. "Mr. Lupin, will you be fine?"

"Yes sir," Remus answered. "I feel perfectly normal now."

Dumbledore smiled slightly. "I'm glad. It looks like it wasn't too severe, but I'll still have a look at the watch." He turned to Mandy and me. "You two don't have to finish your detention, I'm sure Mr. Filch will understand."

"Thank you, sir," I said. Filch nodded, and withdrew from the corner to return our wands. He scowled at Remus, but perhaps due to the fact that Remus had potentially been hurt by a curse, Filch said nothing to him.

Dumbledore and Filch left; Madame Pomfrey fussed over Remus one last time and then also turned and walked out the door. I sank down on the floor and leaned against the low shelf across from Remus. "Eventful night," said Mandy, also sitting down.

"You could say that," Remus replied, laughing.

"Are you sure you're all right?" I asked, worried.

"Yes. I don't know what happened, it just made me fall asleep or something. Don't worry about it."

"Must have been a very deep sleep, because you got all stiff and your eyes were open too," I said.

"I'm glad you're all right," said Mandy.

"Right then, let's get out of here," said Remus. He stood up, and offered a hand to both Mandy and me. We all left the trophy room together, leaving the rags and last few trophies on the floor. "You know, it's all your fault," Remus teased. "If you hadn't made me stay, this wouldn't have happened."

"No, nothing would have happened to you, Remus, but it would have been either me or Melanie," said Mandy, addressing Remus. "Probably Mel, she messes around with everything."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, thanks, Miss I-Never-Mess-Around-But-I-Play-Tricks-On-Sirius's-Girlfriend."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "So that was also you?"

"That was all Mandy, I assure you."

Mandy slapped me lightly. "Thanks a _lot_ , Mel," she whispered. "That was supposed to be a secret…"

"Never stayed much of a secret since you acted like a fool whenever you got anywhere near him," I said.

Mandy glared. "Remus, you never heard any of that, by the way."

"Heard what?" Remus asked, looking up at the ceiling, smiling. "I didn't hear anything."

We parted in the hallway where Remus left for the Gryffindor common room and Mandy and I went down to the Slytherin room. As tired as I was, I lay awake and restless for hours that night.


	7. Quidditch Through the Rages

The dormitory was noisy when I woke up on Saturday. I opened one eye, not wanting to move, and something large and soft landed on my face. "Time to wake up!" I heard. "Saturday! Quidditch! That ringing a bell?"

"Mmmph," I said to my pillow.

The pillow lifted off my face and I saw Mandy standing there looking down at me. "Morning, sleepyhead. Get up."

"Yes, _Mum_ ," I grumbled. Was it already Saturday? My brain was still fuzzy.

"It's going to be a nice day," said Mandy. "We don't have Potions…"

"Of course not, it's Saturday," I said, finally sitting up. Charlotte walked over to the window. "Yeah, nice day," she echoed Mandy sarcastically. I looked up. It was grey and overcast, but at least it wasn't raining. I finally dragged myself out of bed, ready to face the day. My not-yet-started Potions homework wouldn't matter yet, after all.

"Where are Alanna and Rachel?" I asked.

"They went down to breakfast already," said Charlotte. "I'm about to go, too, now hurry up!"

I was ushered into the Great Hall by my friends, and we were surprised to see that Roger Simms, the Slytherin Quidditch team captain, was not present at the table. Perhaps he had slept in – what an idiot. We sat by Russell and Hector, the latter in his Quidditch robes, and even he didn't know where Simms was.

While we sat there eating our breakfast, we were interrupted when a crowd of people showed up, asking what had happened last night. "I heard about that cursed trophy or whatever," said one Gryffindor, "I already asked Remus, but he says he doesn't remember it, and that he was asleep for most of it."

I started to tell the story, occasionally pausing to shovel food into my mouth, when Mandy would continue talking. We reached the part about Remus finding the watch, and when I glanced up briefly, I saw Severus Snape and he seemed somewhat alarmed. He wasn't looking at Mandy and me, but I could tell he was listening in on our story, hiding behind a curtain of oily hair, his head tilted in our direction. _Suspicious…_ I continued, and when I said that we had found Remus lying on the floor, I saw Snape smirk. I wondered if he knew anything about it. So I slid over a few seats and left Mandy to tell the story.

"Severus, I know you were listening. Have you any idea what the watch was for?"

"To tell time, I imagine," he said silkily. I scowled, and he just asked, "Concerned for your dear Gryffindors, now, are you?"

"It was just strange, and you seemed to know what we were talking about, that's all. I'm not even friends with the Gryffindors. Remus only stopped by during our detention."

"How nice of him," said Snape. "And no, I haven't a clue."

With a resigned sigh, I went back to my breakfast; it was unlikely that my old friendship with Snape could last through my befriending one of his worst enemies, so if he knew anything, he'd probably never tell me. Mandy was repeating herself as a few more people had shown up – for the moment, we were very popular.

Charlotte saved us, however, when she told our visitors, "Oi! This is the Slytherin table, and we're trying to eat our breakfast in peace. We want to watch the Quidditch match as much as you, and there's no way we'll get good seats if we can't finish eating. So go back to your tables and you can hear the story later." Some kids looked affronted, but gradually the crowd behind us dispersed.

Thankful to have the Slytherin table back to ourselves, we struck up a conversation with our housemates. Seated next to Mandy was Russell, who set the _Daily Prophet_ down next to his cereal. "The Dark Lord just killed some Mudbloods," he informed us.

"Great breakfast conversation material, Russell," I said.

"What do you think about the Dark Lord, really?" Russell continued in a hushed voice, leaning over his cornflakes to look at us earnestly.

Charlotte glared at him. "Don't talk about that here," she hissed. Generally, no one in Slytherin said much to associate themselves with one side or the other. There was a kind of unspoken rule among Slytherins that you didn't talk openly about blood status and the emergent war and things like that, because it often meant you'd uncover something you didn't like about one of your friends, so it was best to just avoid the topic altogether.

After all, most of us weren't even purebloods – there weren't many of them left anymore. But there were some people like Calvin Mucliber who harped on about family honour and Mudblood-hating just because he was a pureblood. It just made everyone else in Slytherin hate him, for various reasons; because they were jealous, or they were half-bloods, or just because he was a twit. Needless to say, people like him, as well as the few Slytherins who were openly in support of Voldemort, gave our house as a whole a rather unpleasant reputation with the other houses.

I wanted to remain friends with Russell and not find out that he was a Voldemort supporter or obsessed with blood purity, so I tried not to say anything. But he _had_ just asked for my opinion. "I don't like it," I said. "Vol – You-Know-Who's got some intense superiority complex."

Hector shrugged. "Well, I suppose it makes sense because he's the most powerful wizard in the world; he can do whatever he wants and get away with it. He's just doing all the wrong things with his power."

"Yeah," Russell agreed, looking relieved. "I mean, I've never been fond of Muggles, because I don't know any, but I don't support killing anyone. It's terrible."

"So what would you do in his place instead?" Mandy asked. "How would you change the world?" She was clearly attempting to steer the conversation away from Voldemort, and I appreciated it.

Hector stretched his arms out, nearly knocking over my pumpkin juice. "Well, I'd live in a huge mansion, first of all, and I'd make it easier for Hogwarts graduates to get jobs. And I'd give out free treacle tart to everyone."

I grinned. "Free treacle tart? I'm definitely nominating you for the next Dark Lord, Hector."

Charlotte seemed to have given up on trying to stop us from discussing Voldemort at the breakfast table, and chipped in as well. "You know, I've heard he's immortal. I think that's amazing, I'd love to find out how he does it."

"Free treacle tart for the rest of your life," said Russell.

"Maybe You-Know-Who made a deal with the Devil," suggested Mandy, "he can be immortal and powerful in exchange for having the ugliest face on the planet. He doesn't even have a nose, Russ, so he wouldn't be able to smell treacle tart."

At that moment our Quidditch captain Roger Simms came racing into the Hall, followed by three of the other team members, all dressed in their Quidditch robes, but Stephan Flint was missing. Simms scanned the table, and then asked someone, "Where's Bulstrode? Flint is in the hospital wing, he just broke his arm! We need a replacement!"

"Edgar?" the person replied. "Oh, he's in the hospital wing too, you probably didn't even recognize him. He somehow turned himself into a toad a few days ago and no one knows how. Even Madame Pomfrey has never seen anything like—"

"WHAT?" roared Simms. "We are short a Beater, and it's ten minutes before the game! Do you know how to play Quidditch?"

Simms' friend just stared at him, open-mouthed. I suddenly thought of something that could help. Simms would hate it, but it was the best he could hope for in the situation.

"Simms!" I called, standing up. "I'll play Beater."

"You?" he sneered. "You're too _weak_ to play Beater. I'll bet you don't even know how to hold the bat."

"Of course I do," I said as patiently as I could, while resisting the urge to punch him. "You can't play with a Beater missing, what other choice have you got?"

Simms grunted. "Fine," he said after a moment. "But you better do well, and if Slytherin loses I'll know it's because of you."

I turned around, trying to hide the huge grin that was spreading across my face. I was going to play on the Quidditch team! It may have been only as a replacement, but I was still excited.

"You'd better go," said Mandy. "Good luck! You'll be amazing!"

"I need my broomstick!" I realized, and sprinted out of the hall and all the way down to get my Cleansweep out of my dormitory. When I went back to the Great Hall, the team had left, and I continued running until I reached the Quidditch pitch, where I arrived out of breath and already sweating.

"There's extra robes in there," said Andrew Derrick, one of the Chasers, as he pointed towards the changing rooms. "Meet us out here in five minutes. You haven't even trained with us yet, you better be listening when Roger talks tactics." He left.

Hector Branstone, who was also a Chaser, was far more encouraging. "You'll be great, Mel," he said. "And don't get too worked up about Roger's tactics speech. Think of it as tough love – it's meant to motivate and inspire us, really."

As I found a set of emerald Quidditch robes in my size and a Beater's bat lying on the floor, I thought about what Derrick had said. I hadn't trained with the team at all. My initial excitement was wearing away into anxiety – what if I did horribly?

Before we went out onto the pitch, our Captain Roger Simms gave us a last-minute lecture on strategies; I squirmed with nerves whenever his eyes met mine. There was so much to think about. And finally we emerged onto the field, the cold brisk air instantly clearing my mind; I just had to play the game. Around us, cheers erupted from a green-and-silver-clad quarter of the stands, while our opponents received more noisy encouragement, as almost three-fourths of the school applauded for Luke Wilcox and his other Ravenclaws.

"Captains shake hands," a loud voice rang out. I looked up to see today's commentator, Mary Macdonald, a Gryffindor sixth year.

Roger and Luke shook hands, Roger sneering and Luke's piercing blue eyes giving Roger a death glare. It appeared that someone had been trying to crush someone else's fingers. Typical.

Madame Hooch blew her whistle and I mounted my broom and soared into the air, bat in hand. The wind whipped through my hair, and I felt wonderful. I was finally on the Quidditch team. A trunk opened on the field, and four balls shot into the sky. I chased a Bludger and hit it at a Ravenclaw Chaser, who had the Quaffle.

"Braddock has the Quaffle, he dodges a Bludger from Hastings, who is substituting for Flint. I heard that Flint broke his arm when he fell off a moving staircase this morning!" Some people in the crowd laughed. "Braddock passes the Quaffle to Mason, she's going for the goal – she shoots – oh no, Slytherin Captain Simms blocks it… Now Derrick of Slytherin has the Quaffle, he passes to Lim, who's now heading towards the goal. Ravenclaw Beater Howard Lund intercepts with a Bludger! Slytherin Beater Nott just hit Mason with his bat. That's a foul! Penalty to Ravenclaw!"

I was nettled. Some of them seemed to be using dirty tactics, and I knew it would probably lose us the game. And then I would be blamed for it.

"Wright of Ravenclaw has the Quaffle now; Hastings hits a Bludger at him, Wright swerves and drops the Quaffle. Hastings is really good, I wonder why Simms didn't let her on the team. He looks really angry right now."

I tried not to laugh, grateful for Mary's sense of humor to lift my spirits. And Slytherin was winning (although admittedly, I didn't know how many of those points we actually deserved).

Luke Wilcox was a Chaser for Ravenclaw, and as I saw him sneaking around, expecting a pass, I hit a Bludger at him, but he saw it at the last second. He darted left, and collided with Nott. Nott flipped sideways off his broom, managing to hang on with his hands. He swung his feet, and accidentally kicked a Ravenclaw.

"CHEATING!" yelled Mary into the megaphone. "Oh, Derrick scores again – this must be his fifth so far. Lim has the Quaffle now, he scores. Damn it! Sixty-forty to Slytherin."

"Macdonald!" barked Professor McGonagall, and reached out to take the megaphone.

"Sorry Professor," said Mary. "Earle and Warrington are racing for the Snitch! This is it! Oh… looks like they were both faking."

The game progressed, and despite my lack of training with the team, it didn't seem to be going too badly; we were nearly tied with Ravenclaw. I kept focused on the Bludgers and on Roger's voice yelling from somewhere above me.

At one point, Luke Wilcox had the Quaffle and was steadily zooming towards the goal hoops. Just as I was about to hit another Bludger at him, he saw me and grinned, and I smiled back sheepishly, feeling my face heat up. Then, frustrated at my inability to focus, I snapped back to reality and swung wildly at the Bludger, but it wasn't there anymore.

When Simms called a short time out to berate us more on strategies, it took all my energy to concentrate on what he was saying. I felt that I had started playing a lot worse ever since I had noticed Luke. I resolved to think about it no more, because this was likely the only chance I would have to play a Quidditch match.

"All right, back to the game, everyone!" Simms directed. "Stop talking! Hastings, come on. Don't make us lose!"

I had a burning desire to prove Simms wrong. No matter what, I would concentrate on those Bludgers. At the first opportunity I had, I struck it with tremendous force at Luke just as he was preparing to throw the Quaffle. The Bludger rocketed forward and hit him in the head. There was a dull sound and Luke fell sideways off his broom. I gasped, horrified. What if I had really hurt him? I leaned over, and saw the other Bludger coming at me, but I realized too late. I veered off to the left and felt something slam into my back, another stabbing pain in my head. I was falling… and everything went black.


	8. Truth and Truce

I woke up in the hospital wing. My head and back ached a lot, and it took me several moments to realise why I was there. _Some way to end the Quidditch match_ , I thought bitterly. It had been my one shot at showing I wasn't completely awful – and I had fallen off my broom. With difficulty I turned onto my side, and saw two cards, a vase of flowers, and a package on the table next to my bed. I grinned and lifted the cards and package off the table. Before I lay back down to read the cards, I looked briefly at the slip of paper stuck in the flower blossoms. " _Get well soon – with love from Mandy and Charlotte_."

I smiled and leaned back against the pillows, setting the package down next to me. One card was from Mandy, and one from Charlotte. I then opened the package. Inside it I found a card, and underneath several layers of tissue paper was my scarf! I picked up the card, and a bar of Honeydukes' chocolate fell from inside it. The note read,

 _I hope you feel better soon. The chocolate should help. This is your scarf, I_ _did_ _wear it to the match – until James and Sirius noticed it, that is. They weren't too happy about it and tried to put a spell on it, so be careful when you pick it up, I'm not sure what will happen. Nothing happened when I put it in the box, but I would still be careful if I were you._

 _I hope you get well soon,_  
 _Remus_

I grinned again. Honeydukes chocolate… Remus sure knew his remedies. I broke off a piece and ate it, savouring the delicious taste, and then looked in the box again. My scarf was there, and as I lifted it out it was perfectly fine for about five seconds, until it suddenly shot out a large firework as the scarf turned red and gold – Gryffindor colours. Upon hearing the loud _bang_ , Madame Pomfrey bustled out of the back room looking frazzled. She noticed I was awake and inquired about the loud noise.

Gesturing to the box on my lap, I muttered something about a prank box, and she frowned and sighed heavily, shaking her head; the hospital wing was no place for such games. While I pondered over how to get the red and gold out of my scarf, she only moved the box onto the floor and fed me a disgusting potion, then went over to a bed across the room where Luke Wilcox was still sleeping, his blond hair messy on the pillow.

There was nothing else to do in the hospital wing so I watched Madame Pomfrey tend to Luke. I tried to ignore the heaps of gifts and cards on his table, and instead looked at his face. Then my sensible side wondered why I was looking at him at all, and I turned back to face my cards. It was only a few moments of lying there until I dropped off to sleep again.

* * *

When I woke up several hours later, the hospital wing was much darker, and long shadows were thrown across the floor by the various empty beds near the window.

Luke was already awake, halfway through his stack of get-well-soon gifts. I wasn't bold enough to say anything to him, so I just laid my head back down on my pillow and stared at the ceiling. I recalled the crazy events of this past week, which had felt so long; it seemed strange to think that only a week ago I had gone to Hogsmeade with Remus and arranged the prank contest. Sighing, I watched the time tick by on the large grandfather clock.

It reminded me of the watch we had found in the trophy room. What was it? Had it really once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw? I wanted to find out the story behind it. I sat upright, and had swung one leg out of bed when Madame Pomfrey came around the corner and said, "Just where do you think you're going so quickly, dear?"

"Um… I felt better," I explained lamely, "and thought I needed to get going."

"You won't miss any classes, it's Sunday," she assured. "It's nearly dinner time, nothing much is happening out there."

"It's _Sunday?_ "

"Yes."

"Well, I feel fine! Can't I go? And if it's dinner time…"

"You've got a nasty bruise still, and you nearly broke your arm! You got hit by a Bludger, and then sailed right into the Quidditch hoops. You need to rest for a while!"

I sighed heavily. My tactic wasn't working. "I want to find out what happened with that… thing, in the trophy room!" I glanced over at Luke to make sure he wasn't listening, but of course, I saw him watching the whole scene with a puzzled expression.

Madame Pomfrey scowled. "I'm sure Dumbledore can handle it. Now you need to rest, dear." She picked up the bottle of nasty potion she had left on the bedside table, and gave me some more. I made a face and swallowed the medicine, and Madame Pomfrey checked on Luke quickly and disappeared into the back room again. When the hospital wing was quiet once more, Luke asked, "What were you talking about?"

I had expected this, but still had no idea what to say. It was my first chance to _talk_ to him, and I was hoping to not mess it up. But I still had to answer his question. "Um, something I found. Listen, I'm sorry about that Bludger, I saw it hit you and—"

He laughed. "You have pretty good aim."

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine now. I could probably leave if it weren't for…" he tilted his head in the direction of Madame Pomfrey.

"Yeah," I laughed.

"So why were you in such a hurry to leave?" he tried again.

I sighed. "You know the story, I'm sure you've heard it, about the trophy room and the watch?"

"Yeah, I heard a little about it," he said. "Something about it being cursed and made Remus Lupin unconscious?"

"Pretty much. Well I wanted to find out what it was all about. I was going to ask Dumbledore if he's discovered anything."

"Can I come with you? Once we're allowed out, of course."

Now _this_ I had not expected. Part of me wanted to say yes, so I could have more time to talk to Luke. But the sensible part of me wanted to say no because it wasn't his business at all.

Instead I just said, "Why?"

"Well, I want to get out of here, but that's not the only reason," he said, grinning. "Remus is a good friend of mine, we're both prefects, you know, and I want to make sure nothing bad happened to him. And, you're still supposedly hurt… it would be a good idea for someone to accompany you, don't you think?" He winked.

I giggled. _Does he like me too?_ "Remus is fine," I said.

"But, still."

"Okay." I smiled at him, belatedly remembering the way my left eye always squinted up a bit when I smiled too much, so I opened my eyes a bit wider. Then I realised I probably just looked scary like this, and dropped the smile off my face in an instant. Fortunately, Luke didn't seem to have noticed anything.

So later on that evening I begged Madame Pomfrey to release us, and with Luke's help this time she reluctantly consented. We raced out the doors, sprinted down the hall and were close to Dumbledore's office when I realised I still didn't know the password.

I stopped a few feet away from the office. "What's wrong?" Luke asked.

I was about to respond when Mandy and Remus came around the corner together. "Hey, we were just coming to talk to you!" exclaimed Mandy.

"Well, we escaped early," I said, and she laughed. "Now we've come to talk to Dumbledore to find out about the watch. I bet you anything it's Ravenclaw's," I added.

"Duh, only because I suggested that," she said jokingly. "Wait, we still don't know the password!"

"We do," said Luke matter-of-factly, glancing at Remus. "Prefects have such a high status..." he teased.

"Rubbish," I said dismissively.

"Ice Mice," Remus told the gargoyle. The wall split into two behind it and revealed the revolving staircase, which we rode up until we reached a door with a griffin shaped brass knocker. Luke knocked on the door and some idle chatter from inside subsided. Dumbledore opened the door and looked only mildly surprised to see us there.

"Come in," he said, and we all filed inside the room, which contained a number of portraits on the walls, and on the wooden desk sat various odd silver instruments on spindly legs that rattled and puffed smoke occasionally.

Mandy asked, "Did you find out what was going on with that wrist watch?"

"Was it Ravenclaw's?" I added.

Dumbledore smiled slightly and put his fingertips together. "I thought so at first. But now I think it's most likely that it did _not_ belong to Ravenclaw."

"Whose was it, then?" asked Luke.

"Why was it cursed?" said Remus.

"What was it doing in there?" Mandy wondered.

"Be patient, I will answer all your questions eventually, as best I can. But I cannot promise that any of my guesses are correct." He looked over his half-moon glasses at our eager faces, and continued. "So first you asked whose it was. I am not sure. It is in Rowena Ravenclaw's colours, as you mentioned, although I don't believe it actually belonged to her. Now, why it was cursed… It appears to have been a deliberate curse. Why it was done I am not certain, but the effects were temporary. The charm has worn off; it can now be touched with no ill effects."

"So wait," I said, perplexed, "it wasn't actually anything important? It was so scary at the time!"

"It seemed like Dark Magic to me," said Mandy softly, "and it was out there in the front of the trophy case, wasn't it, Remus?"

"That's what I'm worried about," Dumbledore said. "It is very suspicious, mainly the intention of the curse. But I have examined the watch, and cannot find anything else wrong with it."

Luke was frowning in concentration. "Sir," he said, "I've been reading the news a lot recently, and anything weird like this makes me worried it's connected to You-Know-Who somehow. You don't think it is, do you?"

The rest of us stared at him, then at Dumbledore. If Luke was right…

"Why would Voldemort sneak into Hogwarts and leave an old wrist watch here?" I pointed out. Remus' eyebrows shot up and Luke glanced sharply at me. I shouldn't have said the name out loud.

"It says in _Past and Present of Hogwarts_ that you can't Apparate in," said Mandy, "there are special spells on the castle… and that's up-to-date information, the book was written last year."

"Maybe there's a Death Eater at Hogwarts?" Remus asked.

A servant of Voldemort at Hogwarts? We all turned to Dumbledore again, who had been silently watching the conversation with interest. "Very good points, all of you. It's unlikely that the watch belongs to Voldemort, or that Death Eaters are infiltrating Hogwarts."

"You don't think Hogwarts is in any danger from Vol – from You-Know-Who, do you, sir?" I asked.

"Do not be afraid to say the name, any of you," said Dumbledore, his face very serious. "Fear of his name is just what he wants, and he thrives on fear to maintain his power. Hogwarts is not in immediate danger, although it has been growing steadily more unsafe for a number of years now." He looked at our sombre faces and added, "I don't think you should be overly concerned, however. Hogwarts is one of the safest places in the country, and is very well protected. You should enjoy the time you have at school, but be prepared for the unexpected."

We nodded.

"You all brought up some interesting points," said Dumbledore. "I thank you for such a lively discussion. And now I think it's time for you all to be in bed." He smiled as Remus, Mandy, Luke and I made our way for the door.

As we went down the staircase, Mandy asked me, "Do you think we should tell Charlotte?"

Charlotte was the gossip queen of Slytherin. I hoped she had the sense to keep quiet about our discussion, or at least not distort it and worry all of Hogwarts about it. But it really made me wonder how much I myself could keep quiet about it.

We all walked as a group, quietly discussing the implications of the conversation we had just had. Luke eventually split off to go on his way to the Ravenclaw common room, and a bit later Remus, Mandy and I passed James, Sirius, and Peter on their way to the library, and Remus joined them. I continued walking for about two steps until I realised Mandy had joined Remus and the other Gryffindors on their way into the library.

I ran and caught up with them. James and Sirius stared at us as I reached Mandy's side, perplexed that we were hanging around. I was a little confused too, but I had only been following Mandy. Mandy started talking to Remus, and he answered as if this was nothing out of the ordinary, but I felt uncomfortable being here. It seemed that Remus and Mandy were the only two really keen on us all becoming friends. The boys were funny sometimes (all right, a lot of the time), and smart, but they let it go to their heads, particularly James and Sirius. Peter never really bothered anyone if the others weren't egging him on. But Remus's friends didn't seem too thrilled to have us around. I did like Remus, though – in the short time we'd been friends thus far, we'd already discovered a lot we had in common, like a mutual appreciation for dry humour.

Remus sat at a table, and Mandy joined him. The rest of us just kind of stood there, not sure what was happening. "Why are the Slytherins hanging around?" Sirius asked Remus bluntly.

Mandy asked the boys if they wanted to hear Dumbledore's ideas about the wristwatch, and Remus pointed out that Mandy and I had been there too for the wristwatch incident and that he trusted us. So the others sat down, and Remus, Mandy and I told the other Gryffindors what had transpired in the meeting with Dumbledore, after making them swear not to tell anyone. We speculated on whether there might be a Death Eater here, and who it might be. Sirius rattled off a whole list of Slytherins, culminating in my own name, which I did not appreciate. At least he'd suggested it as a joke though, or at least I assumed so.

"I just realised something," said Peter. "Why are we rivals? It seems stupid, since we're friends… or, well, we are friends, aren't we?" he finished awkwardly.

Well, they talked to us, which was something, but I wouldn't go as far as to say we were friends.

"Aren't you all friends with Snivellus?" asked James, ignoring Peter.

"I don't know," said Mandy, glancing at me. "We were. It's complicated. We're in the same house, but Mel and I don't really trust him. I don't know if he trusts us, either."

I chuckled at the look on James's face, and then turning to Peter, I laughed out loud, he looked so confused. But I knew he had a point. Maybe our days as rivals were over. After all, the wristwatch incident had affected all of us, and we did have a lot in common – at least where pranks were concerned.

Peter brought up his idea again, as it seemed no one had heard him the first time, suggesting the end of our rivalry.

"I dunno," said Sirius sceptically. "I kind of like it the way it is, to be honest. What you're suggesting, Wormtail, means that we could no longer play pranks on these Slytherins. It'd be no fun anymore."

"It's all right if you don't want to," I said airily. "I don't think we have any need to be allied with the likes of you. I'd rather have cooler friends."

James laughed. "Damn. And we were hoping you'd at least join our fan club. Well it's settled then – we'll just keep on not liking each other. This has been fun."

Eventually we decided we would try to be friendly to one another. Our brief meeting in the library had impressed upon us all that maybe we weren't all that different, and pranks in good humour could be a sign of friendship rather than old rivalry. So really, nothing much changed, except that maybe we'd agreed to jinx each other in the hallways less.

As Mandy and I departed for the Slytherin common room on the first floor, she then turned to me and said, "Wait till you see how Charlotte takes it," she laughed. "She won't have a clue."

"Yeah." We got on a staircase and it suddenly disconnected at the bottom and started moving to connect somewhere else. "Urgh, I hate when they do this."

"It keeps life interesting," said Mandy brightly. "Otherwise we'd get back to the common room faster and you'd have to start your homework sooner."

"Oh yeah, I guess that's true…" We waited for the staircase to stop moving and got off, a floor below where it usually ended, and walked back to the common room.

* * *

 **A/N: I hope Dumbledore came across as somewhat believable in this chapter - he's incredibly difficult to write. Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated :)**


	9. Surprises

We were queued up for Defence Against the Dark Arts directly ahead of the four Gryffindor boys. Remus, Mandy, and I were joking around, ignored for the most part by Remus's friends, who were having their own conversation just behind us. I didn't think they were paying us any attention at all, until one point when I had just said something to Remus and then heard Sirius laughing behind us in the queue.

I turned around, and Sirius abruptly stopped laughing. "Since when do Slytherins have a sense of humour?" he asked. "I thought you all appreciated humour as much as a bag of dried flobberworms."

"You hit the nail on the head," I said, attempting to not crack a smile. "I hate fun."

Sirius looked at me pensively for a moment, but Remus played along. "Yeah, fun's pretty rubbish, isn't it?" he said. "Quite overrated."

"What have you done to him?" James asked me. "I don't want you corrupting him with your fun-hating ways."

I couldn't keep the smile off my face this time. "Ah. Well then, I guess I'd better revise my bucket list."

Even Sirius grinned at that, but Professor Alvers put an end to our conversation by arriving and letting the queue in for class. Alvers was a new professor; we got a new one for Defence every year for some reason. I wasn't particularly fond of him; he didn't seem to know his subject very well, and as if to disguise that, he had a very intense stare, giving the impression that he knew when I hadn't read the material for the lesson.

Professor Alvers nodded at all of us as we filed into the classroom, his straggly ponytail clinging with static to his robes, and then we began our lesson on Inferi, until halfway through, when he had nothing else to say about Inferi and switched to Chimaeras, which were thankfully far less creepy. At the end of class, Mandy and I joined the Gryffindors on our way out the door, and they looked glad to see us – Peter even went so far as to sling an arm around Mandy's shoulders.

Before long, I felt like we were actually becoming friends. Sort of. We never made any plans together, as friends do – it was just that we kept appearing in the same place at the same time, and then enjoying it. They had plenty of other friends, but they still made time for us, which I figured meant something. And after a few weeks I started to see James, Sirius, and Peter as my friends, rather than just Remus's friends. Even Sirius was not as bad as I had used to think. He wasn't that rude when I actually talked to him – just sometimes a bit thoughtless.

One day a couple of weeks later, after I had given up on my Potions homework, I decided maybe I'd visit the Gryffindors in their common room – after all, Mandy and I knew their password. I propositioned this idea to Mandy.

"Do you think we'll get kicked out?" asked Mandy as we walked up to the seventh floor.

"I hope not," I said, shrugging. "It's not like we're doing anything wrong, we just want to talk with our friends, and you want to stare at Sirius."

"Oh, shut up," she mumbled.

I smiled and we approached the portrait of the fat lady in the pink dress. "Frabjous," I said, and her picture swung out to reveal the portrait hole. Mandy and I walked inside.

The Gryffindor room had a much warmer atmosphere than ours. Gryffindor Tower was one of the tallest in the school, so the view outside onto the grounds was beautiful. The windows were very tall and framed by long red curtains, there was a crackling fire in a grate, and all around the room were lots of comfortable old chairs.

Lily Evans was sitting at a table working with a seventh-year girl I knew only by sight. James and Remus were playing wizard chess at a table near the fire; James was losing horribly because he had an eye on Lily the entire time. Sirius was leaning on the table, looking bored, and Peter was trying to vanish Remus's chess pieces so James could have a chance at winning. He hadn't quite mastered the Vanishing Charm yet so several of the pawns were disfigured.

"Hi," I said, flopping into a chair. Mandy sat in a chair next to mine.

"Intruders," said Sirius, looking up at us.

"Hey," said Remus, looking up from the chess board. "All right?"

"How'd you get in?" asked James, once again distracted from the game. "This room is for Gryffindors."

"This room is for people who know the Gryffindor password," I corrected him. "And we know what it is."

James frowned. Remus shook his head, and said, "I should be appalled at Slytherins in here, but I don't really mind. You're definitely welcome to join us anytime. Checkmate, Prongs."

James turned back to face the game and groaned, pushing the remaining pieces aside. "Who wants to work on Transfiguration with me? Evans, you look like you need a partner," he said, and moved over toward her table, ruffling his already messy black hair.

"I'm sorry, Potter," said Lily. "I'm helping Jia study, this is important information and it's probably all going to be in her N.E.W.T.s."

"N.E.W.T.s?" asked James incredulously. "It's only October!"

"Yes," Lily said, a touch of irritation in her voice, " _some_ people care about their grades and actually work hard; I suggest you do the same." She turned back around, her head held high. James held his hands up in defeat and turned back to us, noticing that we had been watching. He sighed, and smiled uncertainly.

"Oh well," he said. "I've got no reason to work on Transfiguration now, who's up for something fun instead?"

"Me," said Sirius. "I'm bored."

"What about your work?" Remus asked. "We're all working, so you're not going to miss anything if you do your work now too."

James appeared to consider this. "All right, _Mum_ ," he said resignedly as he reached around in his bag for a book. "Padfoot, have you got your Transfiguration book?"

"Padfoot?" I asked, confused. They would sometimes refer to each other by nicknames and I still hadn't quite got who was who yet.

"Sirius," James clarified without an explanation. Sirius lifted a book out of his bag and dropped it on the table unceremoniously, an inch away from my fingers.

"Everyone, I vanished a chess piece," Peter told us excitedly. But I saw a piece on the floor right next to him.

Eventually the six of us all got to talking and enjoying ourselves, and even occasionally working on our Transfiguration, and I appreciated Gryffindor friendliness. I improved quite a lot that day; all four of the boys were very skilled in it, despite how little they said they studied. Peter was a bit behind the other three, but he was still better than I was. And it didn't help that Mandy kept recounting the story of the time I had turned my table into an alligator.

"Moving on, please!" I said. "Something I can do, for once. Charms, anyone? Ancient Runes?"

"None of us are taking Ancient Runes," said James. "I think Evans is, though," and he turned around so fast in his chair that I heard his neck crick. "Evans?"

Lily sighed. "What, Potter," she asked, rolling her eyes.

"You sure you don't want to come sit with us? Melanie's in Ancient Runes, you two can work together on it."

"I'm busy!" She sounded exasperated. "Sorry, Melanie, nothing against you… I can work on that with you later if you want."

"Lay off, Prongs," Sirius muttered to James.

I nodded. "I'll be just fine with this rune stuff."

"Potions, everyone," said Mandy brightly. "Something we're all rubbish at!" She set her book on the table with a thud.

As we all moved on to Potions, James took one last glance at Lily, who seemed flustered and her auburn hair was coming out of its neat ponytail. Sirius followed James's eye and said, "Are you _ever_ going to give up on her, mate?"

"Never," said James firmly. "Some day, Padfoot, when you fall in love, you'll understand."

Sirius leaned back with a silly grin on his face as he imitated a rather dramatic swoon, and then said, "I highly doubt that. Always the idealist, you are."

As he said it he looked up briefly and his eyes met mine. I turned away quickly and pretended I hadn't just been listening in on their conversation about their love lives.

I felt bad for both James and Lily at the same time. Lily had been constantly annoyed or asked out by James Potter at least three times a week since fourth year, and he tended to act like a prick around her. It had come to a climax last year when James had publicly embarrassed Snape, bringing Lily to actually yell at the both of them in an uncharacteristic explosion of anger. But James never got more than indifferent rejection from Lily, whom he genuinely cared about. I couldn't decide who I pitied more.

I looked at Mandy, who was slightly red in the face but persistently tackling her Potions essay. She and Remus both had something written down – I had nothing. As silence descended upon our group, I started writing on my blank parchment.

Remus finished early, and left the table to go read in peace. But when Mandy finished, she had no more work to do, and began asking Sirius random questions about a different essay.

"Mandy, go talk to Remus, or someone else who's not writing a paper," I finally said, after Mandy remarked loudly that she liked Sirius's new quill. She sat there indecisively, and I nudged her. "Oh, go on, he doesn't _bite_ ," I said, and Peter, James, and Sirius laughed a bit louder than seemed necessary. Mandy smiled, rolling her eyes, and walked across the room to join Remus.

I continued struggling with my paper, while across the table James and Sirius were effortlessly flying through theirs; the side of James's left palm was blackened with ink smudges, a struggle I could appreciate as a fellow left-hander. And when finally we all finished, it was approaching dinner time. All four of us packed away our books, stood up and prepared to leave, and Remus and Mandy saw us and returned from their unsuccessful chess game. I slung my bag over my shoulder and started to leave the common room.

"Wait," said Lily, calling me back. "Did you want to work on Ancient Runes with me later?" I walked back over to Lily's table, where she and her friend were cleaning up the various parchments, quills, textbooks, and a few gum wrappers. Mandy waited for me.

"Sure," I agreed, "that sounds good, how about after dinner?"

"Sounds good. So… you and Potter are friends now?" she added uncertainly.

"Yeah, I suppose. I'm not allowed to be friends with him and you at the same time?"

"Well…"

"I know you don't like him," said Mandy. "But Melanie isn't James. She's not going to be asking you out every five minutes, so I'd say it's safe to be friends with her."

We all laughed. "That wasn't the issue," Lily said. "I was actually just surprised; maybe Potter isn't as much of a bigot as I thought he was. He's just never been particularly kind to Slytherins in the past."

"We've always had rivalry, just a sort of friendly one," I said. "The whole group of them really – they've never been that cruel to us. I think they reserved that for Snape and his cronies." I paused, seeing Lily tense up. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned him, I know how things ended with you…"

"Severus is part of the past for me," said Lily. "He's chosen his way, and I don't care anymore."

"You two are Slytherins?" asked Lily's friend Jia, eyeing Mandy and me.

"Oh, I completely forgot to introduce you," said Lily. "This is Jia, she's a seventh year. Jia, this is Melanie and Mandy, they're Slytherins in my year."

"Hi," we all said. Jia looked slightly confused as to why there were Slytherins hanging around in the Gryffindor common room, but didn't say anything.

Mandy seemed to notice, and told Jia, "We met on the train in first year, and Lily and I know each other from Slug Club," she paused to make a face.

Jia laughed. "Yes, I've heard plenty of stories about that…"

"Shall we go down to dinner?" Mandy asked.

We left through the portrait hole and went down on our way to the Great Hall. At the entrance Mandy and I hesitated, glancing over at the Slytherin table.

"Come on, join us over here today," said Lily, and so we all walked to the Gryffindor table.

Dinner was the most enjoyable it had been in a long time. Lily was such a friendly person, and all of her friends who sat with us at dinner were equally nice to us. Afterwards I worked on Ancient Runes with Lily, but then I had to race back to the Slytherin common room before any prefects would catch me out after curfew. Upon reaching my dormitory, I collapsed on my bed and tossed my bag carelessly onto the floor.

Mandy was sitting on her bed, watching me over a pile of parchment. "Hey," she said.

"Hi," I responded.

"I'm confused," Mandy announced, and I had a feeling she had a lot to share. She continued, "Where do we belong? I feel so at home with the Gryffindors, but sometimes I don't know if I trust them. And we see our housemates less now – Charlotte still spends all her time with other Slytherins, and… I just don't know how to balance it all anymore. There isn't enough time to be everyone's friend all the time. Some of the House rivalry runs a lot deeper than just competition."

I nodded. I'd had good friends outside of Slytherin House before, but these days Slytherin was acquiring a bad reputation because it was commonly known that Voldemort had been a Slytherin at Hogwarts, and the increasing tension was palpable as Voldemort's power grew stronger. "It does kind of feel like we're in between Houses sometimes," I agreed. "Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. I think inter-House unity is only a good thing."

"You're right, maybe I should just give it time," said Mandy, and then smirked. "And at least the Gryffindor boys are good at Transfiguration – at least we get that out of it!"

"Yeah, I've improved loads!" I said. I got out my wand, pointing it at a piece of parchment on the floor to Vanish it, but sparks flew out of my wand and hit Mandy's small mirror on her bedside table and cracked it.

I looked up at Mandy, stuttering an apology, but she didn't seem concerned. She just grinned and said, "Seven years bad luck!"

I laughed. "I give up."

"You'll get better."

"Peter is better than me, and you saw how well he did at Vanishing Charms this afternoon."

Charlotte, Alanna, and Rachel entered the dormitory at that point. "Did you hear?" Charlotte announced without preamble. "Remember Lucius Malfoy?"

I nodded eagerly. "Of course I remember him, he's one of Nathan's best friends."

"Well, he proposed to Narcissa Black! I got this long letter from her today. And she said yes! She'd better invite me to her wedding."

"Oh, Narcissa!" Mandy exclaimed. "I miss her! I'd been wondering how she was doing."

Charlotte grinned, encouraged by our excitement, and read us the letter. Identical doe-eyed, sappy expressions appeared on Mandy's and Alanna's faces, and Rachel and I had a rare moment of shared appreciation of the silliness of our respective best friends. But whether or not we were gazing at the letter in Charlotte's hands with silly grins, we all appreciated the news of some of our old housemates.

* * *

The next morning I walked into Transfiguration and took my normal seat next to Mandy. The Gryffindor boys came in late to class, though. I figured they had been off playing some prank. However, during class when we were practicing a new spell, we had time to talk to them.

Mandy was talking with Sirius, so I moved over next to James and Peter, since they were the next closest. "So what were—" I broke off. James had a huge gash on his arm and several more on his face. " _What happened?_ " I gasped. I noticed similar scratches on Sirius; Peter seemed very tired, and Remus looked ill.

"Oh… um, just fancied a stroll in the Forbidden Forest." He grinned.

"All four of you?"

"Yeah."

" _That's_ why you were late to class?"

"No."

"I see… well, what was it like?" I asked.

"Oh, well… forbidden, dark, you know. Lots of trees, animals with claws."

I raised an eyebrow. "I always knew you were all weird, but I thought you'd have more sense than that. That's your idea of a fun pastime? Be careful, I've heard there are werewolves in there!"

He laughed. "I'll keep my eyes open for that. If we do happen to see one, I'm sure we'll be careful." Peter giggled and then looked back at his snail. I looked up to see McGonagall glancing in our direction, and turned around to face my table again before she could tell me off for not paying attention in class.

Sirius and James mastered the spell very soon, winning ten points each for Gryffindor, and spent a good amount of time after that talking, and occasionally distracting Mandy when she was getting close to turning her snail into a saucer. By the end of class she was quite frustrated with the both of them, and during the last five minutes of class when we both finally mastered the spell, she even called Sirius an arrogant berk, something I had known he was for ages, but that seemed to have been lost on Mandy.

As we gathered our stuff, I raised my eyebrows at Mandy and told her, "I'm impressed."

"What?"

"You just called Sirius a berk. I never thought I'd see the day."

Mandy giggled. "I know, it was terrible of me," she said. "But he wasn't laughing at my jokes. Well, I'm off to meet Russell now."

* * *

Friendship with the Gryffindor boys was an interesting venture. Sometimes, though, it didn't work out quite as well as we had intended – or at least, as well as Remus, Peter, and Mandy had intended. House rivalry was sometimes just too much fun.

Remus, Peter, James, and Sirius sat across the room from us in Charms, and after I'd quickly mastered the Silencing Charm on the raven on my desk, so that it sat there opening and closing its beak mutely, I couldn't help but feel smug as I looked over at the boys. They all had noisy birds perched on their table, although they had neglected the birds and were instead laughing at Peter, whose raven was flying around his head as he ducked and waved his hands helplessly at it.

I turned back to Mandy, who was struggling as well. "Don't wave your wand so gracefully, it's more like – this," I Silenced her raven as well.

"Excellent, Miss Hastings! Ten points to Slytherin!" exclaimed Professor Flitwick, a short tiny wizard who had to stand on a stack of books to see the class properly. He waved his wand at Mandy's raven to lift the charm and have her try it again.

Mandy grinned at me, then went back to attempting the Silencing Charm on her raven. I smirked across the room at the Gryffindors. Who had just won ten points? Not them.

When Mandy attempted the charm again, altering her wand motion, Sirius strolled over to our table and grinned mischievously. " _I_ know how it's done. Allow me," he said, and Mandy dropped her wand and gladly moved aside. Sirius muttered something, pointing his wand at Mandy's raven, and all of a sudden, its cawing was magnified ten times, and it started flying around her.

"Did you mean to do that?" Mandy inquired.

"Yep," said Sirius. "Don't know if you'll be able to fix it though…" He laughed.

"You lousy git!" said Mandy, talking loudly over the raven's magnified noise. "Go away!"

 _Well, if that was how Sirius was going to be_ … "Allow _me_ ," I said, smirking. " _Silencio_." I pointed my wand directly at Sirius.

His eyes got wide. "Hey, wha—" he began, but couldn't finish. He continued to open and close his mouth for a moment.

"That ought to keep you quiet for a while," I said coolly. "I wonder if you can handle it? Now go away and leave Mandy alone. By the way, you look like a fish."

James, Remus, and Peter had been watching and were all howling with laughter. Lily looked up, probably thinking some foul trick had been played during class, and saw Sirius silently mouthing like an idiot. She laughed as well and raised her eyebrows at me in surprise.

Professor Flitwick noticed the disturbance in the classroom and made sure Sirius went back to his own seat. Despite Sirius' silence, the room still sounded like a zoo as Mandy's magnified raven continued to screech, until she made me switch with her.

After class, as I walked out the door with Mandy, Lily Evans ran up behind me. "That was great! It really did us all a favour," she laughed. "In fact, I loved your idea and did the same thing later on in class when Potter asked me out again."

"Great! That should teach him."

Lily rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately, I don't think it will." But then her face brightened. "At least it was hilarious to see the expression on his face! I caught him by surprise."

Before I could respond, I suddenly found myself hanging upside down in the air by one ankle. My bag slipped down onto the floor, where I saw Sirius standing nearby, pointing his wand at me. I frantically pinned my arms to my sides to hold up my robes, but based on the smirk crossing Sirius's face as his eyes darted up towards my legs, I hadn't been very successful. With my free leg I tried to kick him, but he was slightly too far away.

"Your socks don't match," he informed me.

"BLACK!" I exclaimed; it was the best I could do. "What is this for?"

"You brought this upon yourself," said Sirius, "with that silencing charm and all." He had paced a step closer while he was talking, and I seized the opportunity; without hesitation I reached out a hand and grabbed a handful of his hair.

"Hey," he muttered, trying to step away, but I had a good hold of him.

"Only if you let me down," I said. "Besides, aren't we supposed to stop all this jinxing?"

"Oh yeah," said Sirius, flicking his wand at me; I swung back down onto the floor and subsequently let go my tight grip on his hair.

"Am I going to have to give you both a detention?" asked Lily blandly; Sirius and I looked at one another and started laughing. Before that point, I had sensed that Sirius was mildly opposed to the company of us Slytherins, but for some reason, that was the moment it all changed.

* * *

Mandy and I did our homework in the Slytherin common room, although at Lily's request we ate dinner with her at the Gryffindor table. We were seated well away from the boys, but Lily kept glancing down the table at them.

"Ugh, Potter and Black are looking over here again," said Lily, turning back to face us again.

"James I'd understand, but Sirius too?" asked Mandy. She looked up, puzzled, and both boys immediately looked down and began shoveling food in their mouths. Lily rolled her eyes.

"All ready for the Ancient Runes test tomorrow?" I asked, changing the topic. "I'm nervous about the test, but I really loved yesterday's reading."

Lily's cheeks flushed to match her hair. "The test is tomorrow?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Oh no!" Lily exclaimed. "I mean, I thought it was next week, and if I'd known, I wouldn't have stayed up so late last night. I was writing an article which I've submitted to _Witch Weekly_ , about the disparity between the sexes in the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers."

"Really?" I asked, excited. "You're getting published? Congratulations!"

"Well, I don't know yet, but I hope so."

"That's wonderful, Lily – you'll have to let us know how it turns out!" Mandy insisted.

As dinner finished, Lily departed to bury herself in last-minute rune translations, and Mandy and I sought out Charlotte.

"You should have joined us," said Mandy.

"I was with Rachel and Alanna."

"Okay. Well, you should join us again next time we go to the Gryffindor room, you've only come with us a few times."

"I've told you, I don't trust them," said Charlotte.

"Neither do we," I said as we approached the bare stretch of wall that concealed the Slytherin common room. "Anyway, Viper." A door formed and we walked inside. It was the sixth password we'd had in a row that was a type of snake.

* * *

Several days later in early November, we found ourselves back in the Gryffindor room visiting the boys, after making them promise they would not use jinxes to levitate me upside down again.

"Not even today?" Sirius asked. "But it's my birthday!"

"You never said so before!" exclaimed Mandy, hugging him. "Happy birthday, Sirius!"

"Thanks," he said, laughing as Mandy released him. "We're about to have a party, actually – you should both stick around!" He disappeared into his dormitory and then returned shortly with a stack of coloured party hats, two of which were red and gold, and he gave these to Mandy and me so he could be entertained by us having to wear Gryffindor colours. James, in the meanwhile, left the common room, saying he would be back later. Sirius handed a particularly repulsive yellow and pink striped glittery party hat to Remus, who politely refused it.

"Hey," Sirius protested, "Prongs and I spent a while trying to fix this nice hat for you."

"It's not my birthday. Where's yours, eh?"

Peter suggested to Remus, "You can always just make a worse one for him."

"Where's James?" I asked.

"He should be back soon," said Sirius casually. And sure enough, in about five minutes, James came through the common room door with a bag full of Honeydukes sweets, which he threw around the common room, telling everyone the occasion. I wondered how James had managed to get all this. But I put that out of my mind as I enjoyed the celebration. A group of third-year girls came up to Sirius, blushing and giggling madly, to congratulate him on turning seventeen. I laughed to myself, remembering Mandy had once been very similar. She kind of still was.

We had a wonderful evening – and I was pleased to see that Remus and Mandy made an even more horrible party hat for Sirius, which was lavender and had unicorns frolicking on it. After a while of festivities, I realised we had to be back in our common room before curfew, so Mandy and I left.

* * *

The rest of November passed by slowly. The Slytherin Quidditch team kept practicing for their upcoming match against Gryffindor, which was to be in January. James, as Quidditch captain for Gryffindor, kept reminding us how excellent his team was and how badly Slytherin would be squashed, but otherwise we got on well. Together we pulled a few remarkable pranks on the entire school, but it was difficult because the Gryffindors wished to play tricks on Slytherin, and we wouldn't allow it.

Even Charlotte sometimes joined us when we went to join the Gryffindors, but not often, because she enjoyed her popularity in Slytherin. Our fellow Slytherins had begun to notice that we disappeared all the time. Our friends, like Hector and Russell, didn't mind, but others were less understanding of our friendship between two rival houses.

One day in late November after I had made a complete fool of myself in Transfiguration with my lack of skill, whereas James and Sirius had perfect transfigured teapots on their tables, Professor McGonagall announced an upcoming event which had not happened in a while.

"The Yule Ball," she said, "will take place on Christmas day. It has a rather interesting history; it used to be a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament, which, as some of you may know, was discontinued long ago because of the death toll. However, the Yule Ball is the only component that remains, although it's not the same as it was in the past, when other wizarding schools would participate. As there will not be another for four years, I suggest if you feel like going, you stay at Hogwarts for the holidays."

She looked as if she was most displeased with the thought of a ball at Hogwarts, but a buzz of discussion broke out in the room immediately. As the bell rang, a good number of people moved out of their seats to discuss this exciting prospect, carelessly leaving ink bottles and quills on the tables as they moved in packs out of the room. I made sure to collect all my stuff as Charlotte and Mandy and I left the room.

Mandy would likely be going with Russell, but Charlotte and I were single for the time being. I was secretly hoping Luke would ask me, but I knew there was no chance of it happening. Would it be that bad if I just went without a date?

Some people came up with elaborate schemes to ask people to the Yule Ball. James would strategically place himself beneath floating mistletoe whenever Lily was near, but she ignored him every time. Once, I even ran straight into Peter and Sirius as they were levitating mistletoe over Lily from around a corner, and somehow they roped me into helping them charm the little plant. The second time we did this, it involved huddling with the two of them inside James's Invisibility Cloak, which was certainly not built for three; there were too many elbows in a small space. It was all for naught anyway – somehow Lily suspected that James had had something to do with mistletoe following her around from class to class.

One day about a week before the Yule Ball, we Slytherin girls were sitting together with the Gryffindor boys at a table in the Gryffindor common room. We were discussing the Yule Ball, like nearly everyone else. The only ones who didn't have a date were me, James, and Peter. James had asked Lily, but she said no; she was going with a Ravenclaw. And I had turned down Hector Branstone in the hopes that Luke Wilcox would ask me instead. I had begun to lose hope now, as Luke still had not asked and there wasn't much time until the dance. Hector had already found another date, so he wasn't even an option anymore.

"I'm getting kind of tired of this Yule Ball stuff," James declared, yawning.

"Only because Lily won't go with you," said Peter.

"Hey," said James defensively, "I'm pretty sure you don't have a date either, Wormtail."

"Yes, I do," Peter said. "I asked her yesterday, my friend Sarah, she's a fifth-year Hufflepuff."

"You're still going to go, right?" Mandy asked James.

"Yeah," said James. "I don't need a date. I'm going stag!" He laughed loudly, and Sirius gave him a high-five. I wondered if I had missed something, because it hadn't been a very funny comment.

"Why don't you ask someone?" Mandy suggested.

"Padfoot will give you twenty Chocolate Frog cards if you do," Remus said slyly. Sirius punched him lightly on the shoulder.

"All right," said James, smirking. "How about it then, Melanie? Do you want to go to the Yule Ball with me?"

"What?" I sputtered. "Seriously? Or is this just because of the Chocolate Frogs?"

James laughed. "No, I'm serious. We're the only ones without dates, anyway."

" _Really?_ " interjected Sirius. "You're Sirius? I thought _I_ was!"

"Shut up, Sirius." I said. I turned back to face James and paused. The truth was, I had been waiting so long for Luke to ask me, but with only a week until the dance, I had to accept that he would not be asking me. I needed to just forget about him, I couldn't keep waiting. "Sure, I'll go with you," I said.

"Great."

I laughed. "What are people going to think of you now? One of the people most responsible for playing tricks on Slytherins and now you're going to the ball with one. I can't believe I'm going with a Gryffindor."

"Life is full of surprises."

* * *

 **Thank you for reading, I really appreciate it! If you're so inclined, maybe drop a review and tell me what you thought about the story, or your predictions for what's next, or just whether you prefer dogs or cats!**


	10. The Yule Ball

Three days later, right before Herbology, Luke Wilcox approached me outside the greenhouse. "Melanie," he called. He had just come running down the hill carrying several books, parchment and a quill. "Hi, I had something to ask you…"

Mandy, who had been walking next to me, stopped, and then walked into the greenhouse alone. Luke accidentally dropped his quill as he tried to put it into his bag.

"All right," I said, trying to conceal a silly grin that had spread across my face when Luke stopped next to me. "Here's your quill."

"Thanks. Er… so, the Yule Ball is really soon," he stated, fumbling with his quill and books. I sighed agitatedly, knowing what was coming next. _Really? Did he have to do this now?_ He cleared his throat. "I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?" He looked up at me.

I didn't know what to say. I had waited so long for Luke to ask me, and now he chose to do so only a few days before the dance! I was annoyed with him for taking so long, but I felt awful knowing that I would have to turn him down. Even though I wanted to go with Luke, James had asked me first and I had already said I'd go with him. Technically I could just talk to James and tell him I'd changed my mind, but I'd feel badly about it.

I sighed. "I'm so sorry, Luke," I told him reluctantly. "Someone else asked me already, and I'm going with him…"

Luke looked back down and focused on the quill he was still spinning in his hands. "Oh, okay," he said, and turned to go into Herbology.

"Wait!" I called. Luke stopped and turned to face me. I carried on, not sure of what I was going to say. "I want to go with you, but…I can't…" I couldn't find the words to finish my thought, and shrugged helplessly. Luke continued on toward the greenhouse.

I couldn't believe it. I stood there for a few moments with my mouth open, staring off into space. I was frustrated at the whole situation, trying to find a way it would work out, before I realised class was about to start and hurried inside.

I walked in to class and stood next to Mandy, not speaking to Luke at all. Mandy looked up, as if to ask me what he had said, but she soon turned back to face the front of the class. I was thankful she hadn't asked me any questions; I wasn't really in a mood to talk. So I just traced my hands through the soil in the tray in front of me and focused on the plants, and after about five minutes, I had calmed down enough and told Mandy, "Luke asked me to the Yule Ball."

She picked up a pot full of dirt and poisonous seedlings and began digging in it. "I'm sorry, Mel. Bad timing, huh? If only he had asked you a few days ago."

"Yeah."

"I think you'll have a great time with James, though. Just try to forget about Luke."

"That's hard."

Mandy laughed. "That's what I say every time you tell me to just forget about someone. Now do you believe me?"

"I guess."

"What's up with Charlotte? She's been sitting there for fifteen minutes and not moving."

"I dunno. Ask her."

"Not right now, Professor Sheridan is looking. Help me dig up these plants, they have to sit in this red potion for six minutes before we can replant them."

* * *

We left class covered in soil and sweat. It had been an intense class. After a long time washing our hands and arms, we finally felt clean enough to go to lunch, but it had started a while ago. As Mandy and I passed the Gryffindor table, James called out to us to join them, but he and Sirius and Peter and numerous other Gryffindors were currently in the middle of a food fight. We declined their offer, laughing, and turned to go over to our table.

A piece of broccoli hit me on the shoulder. I turned around to make a face at them, and kept walking.

"You know," Mandy said, "even though they can be pillocks sometimes, they are pretty great. I really meant what I said before – the Yule Ball will be great with James." She paused. "I know you'd rather go with Luke, but you don't even really know him. That wouldn't be as fun. I think it's better for you the way it is, to be honest."

She was totally right, as usual. I would enjoy it more with someone I knew, I wouldn't constantly have to be worrying about what he thought of me. I pushed the thought of Luke out of my mind, and Mandy and I sat at our table next to Charlotte.

"Why did I ever sign up to continue with Herbology?" Charlotte asked us. "It seems like every day we work with poisonous things, and they always end up getting on me."

"Didn't you hear Sheridan? She said the ones we did today aren't poisonous unless you eat them, Char," said Mandy, helping herself to some potatoes.

"Is that why you were just sitting there during Herbology?" I teased. "Because you ate a poisonous plant?"

Charlotte didn't say anything, and stared intently at the meat dish.

"Wait, I was kidding, you didn't actually eat them, did you?" I asked suspiciously. After a moment of silence, in which I realised there was something she wasn't telling us, I repeated, "Did you?"

Mandy looked up from her potatoes, trying to suppress laughter. "Charlotte!" she giggled.

Charlotte sighed. "Fine. Yes. Warrington dared me to, and he said he would pay me ten Galleons if I did, so I ate one and then I couldn't move for an hour."

Mandy and I roared with laughter.

"And the worst part," Charlotte continued vehemently, "is that he didn't even pay me after that! What a liar. I'm going to kill him."

"Ah, ah," said a voice from behind us, "you don't want people to hear you saying that, Avery." We turned around to see Snape standing behind us, sneering. "They'll avoid you more than usual."

"Go away, Snape. No one asked you to eavesdrop." Mandy snapped.

"Tell me," he continued, "how are you three liking the Gryffindor common room these days? I hear you go there all the time because no one likes you here."

So that was it, then – our friendship with the Gryffindors had been the nail in the coffin of our friendship with Snape. It had been going that way for some time, with his Dark Arts fascination putting us off, but there wasn't much of a point trying anymore. "Actually," I said, "we just leave the Slytherin common room when you're there, because you make it smell bad. Leave us alone."

"Oh, I'm leaving, all right. I don't want to be seen talking to _you_. And watch out for the broccoli, Avery, it might be _poisonous_." He walked away.

Charlotte swore. She started to get up and leave, but we pulled her back. "You can't let him ruin your day," said Mandy.

"It was already ruined. I want to drop Herbology."

I laughed. "You have to admit it was funny, though."

"Yeah, you have to stay here because the last thing you ate was those plants," said Mandy, moving the potato bowl towards Charlotte. "You need lunch. Potatoes?"

* * *

When school let out for the holidays, very few people went home, which was unusual. Normally when we left for Christmas there were about twelve people who stayed; this year almost everyone fourth year and above stayed. It was wonderful being at school with my friends and not having any work to do; although we had been assigned homework over the holidays, there was plenty of other time to do it.

Most years, we'd have some sort of end-of-term celebration in the common room, but the upcoming Yule Ball was exciting enough – plus, for those fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be in Slughorn's handpicked "Slug Club" of students he thought had the potential to become successful in life, there was a Christmas party tomorrow. So Mandy, Charlotte, Alanna, Rachel and I had a night in, eating loads of sweets and lying about on our blankets. We deserved to be lazy after such a hard term at school.

Eventually Rachel got out her tin whistle and began playing "Firewhisky in the Jar," and I sang along. I loved it when she played music – our music was about the only thing the two of us had in common. So we enjoyed playing and singing together while Mandy and Alanna painted their nails and talked about boys. Charlotte watched us all from the doorway of the bathroom, brushing her teeth.

"Rachel, are you going to Slughorn's party tomorrow?" Mandy asked suddenly.

Rachel twirled her whistle in one hand while she slowly looked over at Mandy. "Of course I am," she said. "I'm one of Slughorn's best students."

Mandy turned to face me and rolled her eyes, then looked back at Rachel. "I just think it'll be boring, that's all. Russell doesn't even want to go with me."

"They're not boring," said Rachel. "You should be proud you get to go! It's a small price to pay for the honour we get of being marked for success. And there's always a good supply of mead, so I don't see what you're complaining about. Too bad about your boyfriend, though."

Mandy shrugged. Then there was a loud clattering noise behind me, and I turned to see Charlotte hopping on one foot, surrounded by several scattered bits of oddly striped stones. "Damn it," she said. "Mel, will you get your bloody rock collection out of the middle of the floor?" she asked exasperatedly.

"Sorry," I said, pointing my wand at the rocks and watching them soar back onto my bedside table and arrange themselves nicely beside my spider-plant. Charlotte dramatically hopped back to her bed and rolled over on it, resting her chin in her hands as she surveyed the four of us still sitting on the floor.

We finally began getting ready for bed, though, and started dragging our duvets off the floor and back onto the beds. Mandy approached me and asked, "Do you want to go to Slughorn's party with me? I don't necessarily have to bring a _date_ , just a guest, it doesn't matter. So what do you think?"

"I'm the replacement for Russell?" I asked, laughing. "Why are you going, if you don't actually want to?"

"Well, I may as well go. There's good food. And what else would I be doing then?"

She had a good point. Tomorrow evening I could sit in the dormitory and listen to Alanna worrying about her grades, her chipped nail varnish, or whatever else was stressing her out – but that didn't sound appealing. So I agreed to go with Mandy, to see what Slughorn's legendary parties were like. How bad could they really be?

The party was in Slughorn's office. It was decorated very nicely; there were lots of coloured hangings on the walls, and lamps on the sides bathed the room in a golden glow. Fairies fluttered by the lights and on the ceiling. The room was rather crowded; there were lots of students, some other professors, and house-elves carrying trays of food. I even saw two people in a corner whom I was sure were on the Chudley Cannons, one of the worst and unluckiest professional Quidditch teams in existence.

Slughorn was nearby, and he approached us and said "Miss Macintosh, what a pleasure to see you here. And you, Miss Hastings," he added as an afterthought when he saw me. "Have you met Florence Filburn yet?" he asked Mandy, gesturing to one of the Chudley Cannons people in the corner.

"Er, no, not yet," she said, and the two of us followed Slughorn and were introduced to Florence Filburn. She didn't have a whole lot to say, which I figured was understandable – if the Chudley Cannons were a better team, she might have wanted to say more. Soon I excused myself, although Mandy actually liked the Chudley Cannons and continued talking to Florence.

I got a goblet of mead and set off to mingle with the other students there, and soon found Lily Evans. I had guessed she might be there, as she was talented at Potions and thus one of Slughorn's favourite students. "Happy Christmas, Lily," I said.

"Hi Melanie, Happy Christmas to you too. Having a good time?"

"Yeah. This cake is amazing."

"That's the reason I always show up," Lily said, laughing. "But it is really nice of Slughorn to put on this Christmas party every year. I do like it, it's so much better than the meetings he has throughout the year."

"That's sweet of you," I said. "You should hear Mandy go on about it, she won't shut up about how boring she finds it. But there she is, she's anything but bored talking to that Chudley Cannons player!"

"Is this your first Slug Club party?"

"Yeah, it is. I'm rubbish at Potions so I'm just here as Mandy's guest. But it's fun so far, it's not nearly as bad as Mandy said."

Lily nodded. "Sometimes he invites quite interesting people, too. In the beginning of the year the author of one of our Ancient Runes books was there. And that guy from the Leaping Toadstools who's here today was at the last Slug Club event as well. I'm pretty sure he just secretly lives at Hogwarts, since they're supposed to be playing for the Yule Ball too—"

"Wait, which guy?" I interrupted, looking around. I didn't really care about meeting Florence Filburn, especially because she was just one of the Chudley Cannons, but I would love to meet any member of the Leaping Toadstools, one of my favourite Wizarding bands.

"Oh, I don't know his name, the singer…"

"Are you serious?" I asked. "Damian Tremlett is here?" I craned my neck to look over people's heads and see if I could find him.

"Yeah, he was over there somewhere a few minutes ago… are you a big fan?" She laughed.

"Er, you could say that," I said. I glanced around nonchalantly for a scrap of parchment lying around on a table, but found none. Maybe I could run back to my dormitory and get a quill and bit of parchment and come back in time to find Damian Tremlett and get his autograph…

"You should go find him," Lily suggested.

"I think I will," I said. "It was good to see you!" I started to head for the door, as one of Lily's fellow Gryffindor friends showed up and found Lily.

At that point Mandy found me. "There you are. Guess who I found? Hey, where are you going?" she asked.

"I'm going back to the room to get some things."

She snorted. "Some things? That's really not vague at all."

"I'm going to get paper and a quill because Damian Tremlett is here and I want his autograph," I said very quickly.

Mandy laughed. "I just met him!" she exclaimed as she followed me towards the door. "Should I go back and warn him that a crazed fan is coming to meet him?"

"I'm not crazy… Whatever, you'll just be jealous when I have his autograph and you don't!"

"Poor Luke, he has some serious competition. I'll tell him that he should grow his hair long and learn how to sing," teased Mandy, grinning.

"Oh, shut up." Honestly, Luke didn't need to do anything to catch my attention, he already had it. And I had _almost_ caught his attention in time for the dance, but not quite soon enough.

I left Slughorn's office and ran all the way to the Slytherin common room. As I approached the bare wall which concealed the door, I noticed a first-year Slytherin boy sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, his bag of textbooks next to him. He stood up when I skidded to a stop, and looked very relieved I was here, which was sort of odd because I didn't know him.

"Hi," he said timidly. "The password's just been switched, and I forgot it already," he said.

"Oh. How long have you been waiting here?" I asked, out of breath from running.

"About fifteen minutes… no one's come by to let me in."

"I'm sorry," I told him. "The password is 'pureblood.' The world's dumbest password, isn't it?"

"Er, I guess," he said, as the wall opened to form a doorway.

"It _is_ a stupid password. Salazar Slytherin was a bit mental, he wanted Hogwarts to be only pureblood students, but if it were, there'd be about thirty people here."

"Calvin Mulciber told me that the –"

"Whatever he said, don't listen to him, he's an arse. And he likes to play around with Dark Magic like it's something harmless from Zonko's."

"He knows a lot about the Dark Arts," the kid admitted.

"Yeah…" I said. I reminded myself to check on the kid later and make sure he didn't spend too much time with people like Mulciber who would brainwash him into the same pureblood and Dark Arts fascination and love of power that had captured much of Slytherin house.

I suddenly remembered why I'd run all the way back here in the first place. Rather than going up the stairs to my dormitory for paper, I ripped a corner off a page on the notice board. "Do you have a quill?" I asked the first-year. "Can I borrow it and return it to you later?"

"Erm, sure," he said, taking a quill out of his bag and looking rather confused. I realised he probably had no idea who I was, and I still hadn't introduced myself. The poor kid, he seemed shy and I'd probably scared him or something.

"Thanks. I'm Melanie, by the way."

"Hi… I'm Mark," he said as I spun around towards the door.

"Okay. I'll see you later!" With the quill and the scrap of paper clutched in my hand, I dashed out the door and back to the party.

I noticed Damian Tremlett almost immediately when I walked back into the room, and I started making my way through the various groups of people chatting. Someone else was talking to him at the moment, so I waited and struck up a conversation with Priya Kaur, a Ravenclaw girl who always sat with me in Astronomy class. It turned out that she was also waiting to get an autograph.

After Tremlett was available again, Priya and I both moved over and introduced ourselves and got autographs. I told him how much I loved the Leaping Toadstools. Then there was a bit of an awkward pause, during which Priya and I looked at each other and realised that other than that, we didn't really know what to say. I would have loved to ask him something, but I didn't know what. I was sure we had come across as extremely silly to him, but fortunately he showed no annoyance at this and was very friendly. We both thanked him, then someone else came up to talk to him and we stepped away.

Priya and I spent the next five minutes giddily discussing our luck at meeting Damian Tremlett; Priya told me she would proudly hang the autographed piece of parchment on the wall in her dormitory. I thought I'd hide mine so none of my friends would take it.

That was definitely the highlight of the evening. The rest of the party was fun, and after a while it started clearing out and I found Mandy again. I showed her the autograph and told her, "Whatever you say, I _don't_ think Slug Club parties are boring. And maybe even Slughorn isn't quite as bad as I thought he was."

* * *

The morning of December 25th, I woke to find a pile of gifts near the foot of my bed. As I was first in the dormitory to wake up, I ran over and pounced on Mandy's bed to wake her up as well. She shoved me off, and then woke the rest of the girls by yelling, "It's Christmas! Time to get up! Presents!"

Alanna opened her bed hangings to throw a pillow at us and then went back to sleep, until Rachel sat up excitedly and threw her pillow at Alanna in turn. Charlotte begrudgingly got up as well, and we all reached for our presents.

I had received a book about magical tropical plants from Mandy, a set of quills from Charlotte, and some Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans, and Zonko's joke products from James, Sirius, Remus and Peter. "Mel!" exclaimed Mandy as she admired her gift from me, hidden behind the paper sleeve that read 'Station to Station'. "Thanks for the record! We need to find a way to make my turntable work at Hogwarts. Or invent a magic-powered turntable."

The last present I opened was a wool hat from my family. It was green and silver with serpents embroidered on it. I left it in its box and got ready to go up to breakfast.

We walked up to the Great Hall to find twelve trees set up, sparkling as if it had just snowed. There were fairies on top of the trees. It was absolutely stunning.

We walked up to the Great Hall to find twelve trees set up, sparkling as if it had just snowed. There were even fairies on top of the trees. It was absolutely stunning, and the food was spectacular, as always. Mandy and Charlotte and I visited the Gryffindor common room after breakfast, where we played Gobstones and chess with the boys and ate delicious sweets from Honeydukes, which one of them had received as a Christmas gift.

That afternoon Mandy, Charlotte and I went sledding on the hills near the frozen lake. We all got extremely cold and wet, but it was a great time, and about half past five o'clock we left to go inside and get ready for the Yule Ball.

We walked down to our dormitory, where out the window we could see a snow fight raging, and then closed the curtains and began preparing for the dance. I let Mandy do my hair, since I considered my curls unmanageable, and was planning to just leave it alone. She put it up with a few ringlets hanging down. Charlotte and Mandy both curled their hair into neat waves, and then we got out our dress robes: mine were purple, Mandy's silver, and Charlotte's a dark Slytherin green.

Alanna and Rachel came into the room at about six o'clock, and all of us got into a lively discussion about the dance and who was going with whom, and various other topics. Rachel and I were both beyond excited that the Leaping Toadstools were providing the music, and we spontaneously treated the other three girls to a slightly horrible rendition of "Bowtruckle Blues." It took us a while to get everything done, but eventually all five of us were ready.

We headed down to the common room together, where the other four found their Slytherin dates, and I walked to the other end of the room and out into the hall, where I found James waiting for me.

"How did you know where our common room is?" I asked, surprised.

"Well, you know where ours is," said James.

"You showed us. We never showed you ours."

"I just know these things." He grinned. "You look great, by the way."

"Thanks, so do you."

"Should we go up to the Great Hall, then?" He offered me his arm gallantly.

I took it, laughing. "Sure."

All the long House tables had been replaced by a number of smaller tables for the Christmas feast. James and I sat down at a table and were soon joined by Remus and his date Marlene, and a few other people I didn't know. The feast was excellent – the best part was that to get food, we just had to tell our plates what we wanted and it would appear.

The enchanted ceiling of the Hall showed a clear sky sprinkled with bright stars. The room was filled with talking and laughter, and it was altogether a wonderful atmosphere as we ate our dinner. It was very enjoyable, and a great opportunity to talk to people I didn't ordinarily spend much time with. As dinner ended, the raised platform at the end of the hall where the staff table usually was became a stage; the small tables cleared away to the side, and the Leaping Toadstools took the stage and began to play.

James and I made our way out onto the dance floor, among all the other couples. The first song was pretty fast, a great way to start out the dancing. We danced and talked, and I was really enjoying myself despite all the drama leading up to the dance. But it seemed that every time I turned my head Luke was there, dancing with Rashmi Choudhury, a very pretty and popular Hufflepuff in our year. Why did Luke need to be right there? Did he know how much that annoyed me?

After a while James and I went back to the tables to sit down and rest. He spotted some fellow Gryffindor Quidditch team members and told me he was going to join them for a little while, if it was all right.

"That's great, I'll see you later." I smiled and walked towards a different table, where I saw Mandy sitting with Russell, Charlotte, and Stephan Flint. Mandy waved at me, and I sat down by her.

"Hi," I said brightly. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No, not at all!" Russell answered, smiling. "Have you been enjoying the dance so far?"

"Yes, it's been fantastic! How about you, what do you think?"

"It's definitely been fun. Who did you come with?"

"James Potter," I said. Russell stared at me blankly, and on Flint's face was a disgusted expression. "Excuse me?" I asked Flint defensively.

"You could have picked anyone, why Potter?" he spat. "He's a Gryffindor, he's arrogant, he's rude to every Slytherin in this school, and just a horrible person in general."

"He's a Gryffindor, yes, and there are some Slytherins he has disagreements with. But that's normal for anyone. He is not a horrible person. Why do you have so much against him?"

"Stop," said Mandy, reaching her hand out between us and trying to stop what she sensed as the start of a heated disagreement. "Stephan, she's allowed to talk with whomever she wants, don't insult her taste in friends. Mel, don't get so worked up."

"Well I'm sorry I came over here," I said huffily, starting to stand up, and glaring daggers at Flint.

Mandy stood up too. "Wait, I haven't had a chance to talk to you since before the dance!" She turned to face Russell. "We'll be right back." She grabbed my wrist and led me over to a more secluded table.

"Melanie, I'm so sorry about him."

"It's not your fault. I hate Flint. Why on earth did Charlotte go with him?"

"Calm down," she began, putting her hand on my arm. "He's actually not that bad. I talked with him for a while, since we were sitting at the same table for dinner. I think he snapped at you because he's just jealous of how much attention James gets on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and how everyone at school loves him – and I think he just dislikes James because of how easy he makes it look."

"I guess that's understandable," I confessed after a bit. "Actually to be completely honest I think part of the reason I hate Flint is because _I'm_ jealous… he's on the Quidditch team, in what should have been my spot. But mainly just because he's such a prick."

"It's okay. Jealousy is only natural; it's human."

"Spare me the philosophy, Mandy."

She laughed. "You definitely should be on the Quidditch team, though. You'll make it next year, there's no question about it. And Flint will even have left Hogwarts by then. But I promise, Flint's not as bad as he came off just then."

"Okay."

Mandy smiled. "I'm sorry."

I sighed. "Don't worry about it. How are you liking the dance?"

"I love it. I'm having so much fun. We're going to have to talk all about it afterwards." She grinned, adjusting one of the clips in her short blonde hair. "But right now I think I see James looking for you." She pointed behind me.

"All right. Have a good time for the rest of the dance! I'll probably see you on the dance floor at some point."

"Great!" We got up and she went back to join her table, and I walked off after James.

As I approached him, Lily and her partner Lewis Ackerley emerged from the crowd, heading towards the tables by the window. James, rather than walking towards me, diverted off to the table where they were sitting. I caught up to him before he got there, and grabbed his arm, leading him away back into the crowd. "You can't make it that obvious. Give her a break."

He laughed it off. "What makes you think I was going to talk to her?"

"James, I know you better than that." So we sat at a table together, far away from where Lily and her date were still sitting. Then we just discussed Quidditch, which was a great conversation topic to distract the both of us from our failed dates that we didn't want to admit.

As we were sitting at the table and talking, Sirius bounded up to us, having just left the dance floor. "Enjoying yourselves?" he interrupted.

"Hey, Padfoot," said James, smiling. "How's it going?"

"Great! Why are you just sitting here?" He turned to me. "Come dance."

"What?"

Sirius grinned, grabbing my hands and pulling me off the chair. "What about your girlfriend? Where is she?" I protested, as he put one hand on my waist and marched me onto the dance floor as if we were doing a rather awkward tango. I shot a confused look at James, who was laughing.

"I don't know," said Sirius. "She went to talk to her friends. Oh, actually I see her over there, she's dancing with Caradoc Dearborn. He looks like a rubbish dancer, though. I'm much better."

"Well I don't want to dance with you," I said, trying to prise his hands off of me. "What are we doing? This song isn't a tango."

"Would you have preferred a slow song?" He smirked.

"Yes. Then your girlfriend would get jealous and she'd come separate us, and I wouldn't have to dance with you."

He laughed. "It's a fun social dance, Hastings, not a proposal. The point is to make friends!"

I scowled.

"Come on, it's Christmas." He lifted his arm and I twirled under it, laughing despite myself.

This was so unlike Sirius, trying to get me, of all people, to dance with him. "What is this all about?" I asked suspiciously, narrowing my eyes. "Who put you up to this? You never go out of your way to talk to me. Should I be expecting to turn into a toad after this, or something?"

Sirius grinned. "That's a brilliant idea," he said. "You're quite fun when you're paranoid. Anyway, no ulterior motives, I just decided you're not as horrible as I originally thought." He shrugged.

I shook my head, baffled. "You need to work on your people skills."

"You look nice today," he said. "Is that better?"

"What?" I didn't know how to respond, and felt an unwelcome flush creeping up my neck; it was probably the only nice thing he had ever said to me. "You are a ridiculous individual."

He laughed. "I believe the polite response would be 'thank you'. Is purple your favourite colour?"

"Actually, no, my favourite colour is orange. But I don't have orange dress robes."

"Look," he said suddenly, pointing over towards the side of the Great Hall where the tables were. James and Lily were standing by one of the tables, talking. Oddly, they didn't even seem to be annoyed with one another. "I think Evans actually just smiled."

"I think we've just witnessed a historic occasion," I said.

It was short-lived. As the last few notes played in the song Sirius and I were dancing to, I looked back at Lily and James only to see James ruffling his hair nervously as Lily walked away scowling. Sirius and I made our way off the dance floor as James chased after Lily.

Lily sighed heavily. "I should have known that having a normal conversation with you was too good to be true. Please leave me alone, Potter."

James seemed to deflate. "Sorry, mate," said Sirius. "Bad luck, not even the Christmas spirit can change her mind. Even Melanie and I danced and we hate each other."

"Bollocks," I said to Sirius. "We don't hate each other, stop being dramatic. Anyway, I came here with James, not you. It's been fun." I walked over to stand by James's side as Sirius disappeared into the crowd.

I was unsettled to see this sensitive side of James, in contrast to the usual troublemaking, confident Quidditch captain side of him I usually saw. He was good at pretending otherwise, but it was clear to me how much it frustrated him that he couldn't get Lily to like him, after all these years. I wasn't quite sure what to say. "I'm sorry."

"I'll live," he said. "She's right, anyway. I was being a git. She's happy with Ackerley, I should be happy for her."

"James, have you ever considered… anyone else? What if Lily wasn't an option? Are there any other girls you like? You deserve better than rejection."

He watched me carefully. "My mum told me something similar once," he said. "You know, it never used to be that bad with Evans until the end of last year, and since then she's hated me." He was silent for a moment, then added, "I've always been close with Vivian on my Quidditch team. I think she likes me. I never asked her out though, because she's a seventh year. And I wouldn't want her to feel like a second choice."

"Then treat her like she's your first choice," I suggested. "As for asking out a seventh year, I thought you were a Gryffindor, James. Brave and bold, right?"

James smiled. "I never expected to hear such wise words from a Slytherin," he teased. "Thanks, by the way. Let's go enjoy the rest of the Yule Ball, shall we?"

We walked back in past Lily and Lewis, who James didn't even look at, whereas Luke, Flint, and everyone else I wanted to avoid were nowhere in sight as James and I went back onto the dance floor and danced the night away.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: The 1976 album 'Station to Station' is by David Bowie.**

Thanks for reading!


	11. Mandy's Lonely Hearts Club Band

As Charlotte and I were eating lunch two days or so after Christmas, and discussing the Yule Ball for the ten thousandth time, she informed me of a particularly juicy piece of gossip. "Guess what I found out today? I'm glad Mandy's not here to hear it, although I guess she'll find out soon enough, anyway - I heard that Sirius and Kristen broke up."

"Really?" I asked. "When? They were still together a few days ago, at the dance."

"About ten minutes ago."

" _Ten minutes?_ " I laughed. She knew the latest gossip before it even happened. It was like she had a sixth sense for it. "Charlotte, you know that when you're old, you're going to be one of those nosy, completely mental old ladies who spies on her neighbors with binoculars?"

She grinned. "Maybe I'll just be so great at Divination, I'll be a Seer and I'll know what my neighbors are doing without having to spy on them."

"Right, you'll just sit in your rocking chair and crochet sweaters for your eleven cats, and occasionally stare into a crystal ball to interpret your neighbors' future. You take stalking to a whole new level, but in a very subtle way. Well, your life will be great. I'm jealous."

"Brilliant," she replied. "I've always dreamed of having such an interesting life. Too bad you won't be so lucky, you'll be sitting around all day staring at plants and trying to understand their feelings, or whatever it is about Herbology that you like."

I laughed. "Maybe just in my spare time," I said. "Actually, in terms of a job, I've been thinking I want to do something in research, like how magic works."

"That sounds complicated," she said. "But let's not talk about jobs and stuff yet, it's depressing. Even after career advice last year, I still have no idea."

"Well that's because Slughorn was in charge of us, of course he wasn't any help." Things like last year's career advice sessions made me wish I was in Gryffindor, because their Head of House, Professor McGonagall, would have helped me infinitely more than Slughorn. She may lack a sense of humour and be crazy about discipline, but she was brilliant and would know how to guide a fifteen-year-old through the mess of career options. Unfortunately, I had been stuck at a table listening to Slughorn prattle on about how his second cousin's neighbor's ex-wife played for the Caerphilly Catapults. Granted, they were my favourite Quidditch team, but I didn't care who Slughorn knew. That wouldn't help me with my future.

"Ugh, tell me about it," Charlotte said darkly. "He offered me some food and asked me if I was related to Vincent Avery, who invented a hair-thickening potion and some jinx that makes you cross-eyed if you hear someone say 'kneazle.' I told him I wasn't, because I'm not – how embarrassing would that be, he sounds like a complete nutter – and then Slughorn said 'oh, that's a shame' and talked about someone he knew who invented a potion in our textbook. The only advice he gave was that he had connections if I wanted to be a Healer. Can you imagine _me_ , a Healer?" She snorted.

"So useful, I know," I said. "It is difficult to decide though; too many things sound interesting. Curse-breaker, tropical herbologist… or there's always cat lady." I grinned.

"I wish that was a real career," she mused. "Anyway, what were we talking about before? Oh yeah… let's not tell Mandy about Sirius and give ourselves a little peace and quiet until she finds out herself."

"Tell me what about Sirius? What am I finding out?" asked a voice from behind us. Mandy had chosen that moment to join us. She sat down next to Charlotte, grabbed a sandwich and took a huge bite. Charlotte rolled her eyes. I shoveled food into my mouth so I wouldn't have to be the one to tell Mandy.

"Er, Sirius and Kristen broke up…" Charlotte finally said. I guess she knew it was pointless to keep it from her; it wouldn't have lasted long.

Mandy's eyebrows shot up. "Rrrulllly?" she asked through a mouthful of sandwich. She swallowed, and said rather quickly, "No, I don't mean it that way, I promise." She coughed. "What are you laughing at?"

I started eating my green beans again. Charlotte kicked me under the table and said, "Oh, nothing." Mandy raised one eyebrow. Then she turned to face me with the same expression, as if demanding an answer.

"How's Russell?" I asked with a smirk.

"All right," said Mandy seriously, with far less enthusiasm than usual. She and looked down the table at Russell, who waved at us. Mandy smiled back at him, then turned to face her food again and sighed. "But, well, I'm not sure how much longer it's going to last."

Charlotte snorted. "I hope this idea of yours isn't just because of… recent events concerning certain Gryffindors."

"It isn't," Mandy said. "Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not really into Sirius anymore. Anyway, Russell and I have been like this for a little while."

And indeed, two days later, Charlotte informed me that she had overheard bits of a discussion between Mandy and Russell in the common room earlier in the afternoon, so we decided that as her best friends it was our duty to find out what had happened. We went up to the dormitory, and found her sitting on her bed with the hangings open, a mess of tiny beads and wires spread out before her. She held up a completed earring. "Check this out," she said. "I just made it."

"It's gorgeous," I said. "I love it. If you ever find the pair of them missing, it's because I stole them."

"I'll put charms on them so they only look good in my ears," she asserted.

I grinned, and then asked her what Charlotte and I had actually come to ask. "Everything all right?"

She looked at both of us, then back at her beads. "Russell and I broke up." Charlotte and I glanced at each other. Given what Mandy had said earlier, we had thought it might be something like that.

"Are you okay?" Charlotte asked. I could tell she really wanted to ask if it had anything to do with Sirius, but she didn't mention it.

"Yeah… I think we're both better off this way, anyway. It was easier when we were just friends. We're going to stay friends."

"That's good. How is he dealing with it?" I asked.

"Pretty well I imagine, he broke up with me, not the other way around. And there was no fight or anything. We just…" She shrugged. "He's interested in blokes, actually. But I don't think he wants everyone at school to know that, so don't go repeating it."

"Oh, okay," I said, musing that it sort of explained some things about Russell. Regardless, though I was rubbish about revealing my own secrets, this was far more important as I could end up hurting a friend. I hoped I could keep my promise.

Charlotte nodded as well, but then her inner gossip lover surfaced. "You know, Mel and I had been thinking you broke up with him because you heard that Sirius was single. But we weren't going to mention it."

"Charlotte!" I said, laughing and slapping her arm.

Mandy started laughing as well. "No! What does it take to convince you two?"

"It is a sad time for relationships though," said Charlotte. "Two breakups within two days. You and Russell and Sirius and Kristen could form 'Mandy's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' and pine about your losses together," she teased.

Charlotte's snark went right over Mandy's head, as Mandy cried, "Ha! Mel, did you catch that? We finally did it, we've converted Charlotte to liking the Beatles."

I grinned. Mandy's and my mutual love for the Beatles had been one of the first things we'd realised we had in common back in first year, as she came from a part Muggle background, and I was from a small town near Liverpool. We had wanted Charlotte to understand what it was all about, and rather enjoyed the challenge of getting a pureblood to appreciate Muggle music.

"I didn't say I liked them," said Charlotte sniffily.

* * *

Classes started back up again shortly, which was nice as the castle was beginning to seem empty when some people had gone home following the Yule Ball. It was especially exciting because there was a sign on the notice board in our common room stating that Apparition lessons would be starting in February for anyone who would be seventeen by the 31st of August. All the sixth years were thrilled – I personally had been looking forward to it ever since Nathan started showing off at home the summer after he took his test by Apparating near me all the time to startle me.

This great start to the term was better still when a fresh layer of snow fell during the first week, so of course snowball fights raged all over the grounds and snowmen were everywhere. Mandy, Charlotte, Alanna, and I were building a snowman that weekend when we were interrupted by enormous snowballs being pelted at us from afar, by magic – there was no way anyone could throw a snowball that large. It seemed to be several people doing this; I saw more snowballs of the same size over by the lake, attacking Edgar Bulstrode and another fifth-year Slytherin, who were charming a snowman to walk like a zombie.

Suddenly, a large snowbank near us formed into a lion, which roared and jumped at us. I instantly knew who must be doing this – and sure enough, I spotted Remus and Sirius behind a tree, in a fit of laughter as I ducked from the lion leaping around. Then the lion fell apart, turning back into a pile of snow, which collapsed on top of me. As I struggled out of the snow pile, Remus and Sirius got up and left, still laughing.

Charlotte drew out her wand and created a snow serpent that chased after them, and once I had freed myself from the heap of snow, I ran after them as well. I caught up and grabbed my wand, pointed it at a nearby tree, and cried, " _Mobiliarbus!_ " Since the tree was firmly planted there and couldn't move, as a potted plant would have done, the top of the tree simply rocked back and forth and showered Remus and Sirius with snow.

After a moment I heard Remus's voice say, "Merlin, you certainly have it in for us. We were just peacefully enjoying the snowy day and you had to come by and dump snow on us."

"Well you know, we were just peacefully building a snowman, when you attacked me with a snow lion…"

"Don't take it personally," said Sirius. "It wasn't just you, we were throwing snowballs at all Slytherins we found."

"Oh thanks, that makes it so much better."

Just then Mandy came running up to us, closely followed by Charlotte, Alanna, and the snowman, which they had turned into a snow troll in my absence. All of them were carrying snowballs. "Snowball fight!" cried Mandy, and unleashed her armada of snowballs. People from other houses showed up out of nowhere to join in, and it was a blast.

At one point, when it had seemed the snow fight was calming down a bit, someone behind me grabbed the back of my coat and stuffed snow in. I gasped as I felt the freezing snow on my neck and in my coat, and turned around to see Sirius beside himself with laughter. I ran at him and pushed him down in the snow, but he grabbed on to me as he fell and pulled me into the snow as well. We rolled over in the snow a couple times, and I ended up lying on my back, and Sirius was on top of me.

"Get off me!" I said, and I squirmed to push him away but he had already got up quickly, looking rather embarrassed – a rare expression for him.

I started to laugh. "Are you _blushing?_ " I asked incredulously as I sat up. For once it seemed it was me who had him in the awkward situation rather than the other way around.

But it didn't last long; if he had blushed at all he recovered quickly and responded, "Oh yes, Hastings. It's because I'm _madly_ in love with you. The cold has nothing to do with it." Then he shook the snow out of his shaggy dark hair like a dog shaking off water. And now it was my turn to be embarrassed again.

Sirius stood up and offered me a hand, but I scowled and got up by myself. "Turning me down when I just confessed my love for you?" he teased. "I'm so hurt."

"Well, life's tough," I said, stooping to grab a large handful of snow and then dumping it on him.

"Careful, Melanie," he said, grinning. "I know your weakness now."

So I burrowed my head further down into my scarf and cloak like a turtle, so as to protect my neck from any more snow. But it didn't last long; he proposed a truce hug and I fell for it, receiving another icy shock, and then we were back to hug-tackling each other with snow, laughing and shrieking, and finished the snowball fight far more soaked and exhausted than anyone else. We all walked up to the castle arm-in-arm, part of a big group of Gryffindors and Slytherins together, with a few random Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Upon returning to the castle, we passed by James in the corridor, hand in hand with Vivian Bell, and he waved at us.

After our snowball fighters had disbanded and gone to our separate houses, I came across Mark, the first-year whose quill I had borrowed before Christmas, in the common room again. He was in a chair by the fireplace; he and a couple of other first-years were all bent over a thick book I recognised as _A History of Magic_ , one of my least favourite books in the world. I ran up to my dormitory, threw my coat and gloves onto my bed, and found Mark's quill on my bedside table next to the autographed parchment.

"Here's your quill," I said when I brought it back down to him. "I'm sorry it took forever for me to get it back to you."

"That's okay," he mumbled, taking back the quill.

"Aren't you the girl who loves Mudbloods?" a dark-haired girl next to him asked suddenly. "Elliott Jasper said so."

"Hmm," I said evasively. "Well, we're not the best of friends, I don't know what he's said about me behind my back. But I don't have a problem with Muggle-borns."

The girl scowled. Mark looked back at his textbook, and then at the blank piece of parchment in his other hand. "Hey, do you know anything about goblin rebellions?" he asked hopefully.

"There was one in 1613," I said uncertainly. I had never paid attention in History of Magic, mostly due to the fact that the professor could make even the most attentive student fall asleep with his boring lectures. I had been so glad to drop the class last year. "No… maybe it was 1712? I'd love to help, but I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I nearly failed my History of Magic O.W.L."

He turned back to his textbook and blank parchment with a groan. "I'm going to fail the class before I even make it to O.W.L.s," he said.

"No one does well in that class, you're not the only one. Don't worry, you'll never need to know any of that information again anyway. Just write really big and you won't have to write as much."

"That's not helpful," said the dark-haired girl with a patronising look.

"Yeah… Sorry I'm not much help. If you ever have trouble with Charms though, I'd be glad to help." I took out my wand and demonstrated by practicing a little of what I had just learned in Charms this week, sending a perfect fountain of water at the back of Elliott Jasper's head. He turned around, furious, and I looked up at the ceiling casually, one hand up as if trying to tell if it was raining. "Well I'd better go," I said, as Jasper stood up. "Things to do… Good luck on your essays." I sprinted up the girls' staircase before Jasper had the chance to do anything.

* * *

The following week, tensions between Gryffindor and Slytherin were slightly higher than usual because this coming weekend Gryffindor would face Slytherin on the Quidditch pitch. James's group reverted to old habits a little, and didn't have much to say to me other than brag about Gryffindor's team, or make somewhat snide remarks about my spectacular fall from my broom in the last match and ask if I'd be on the team again and try out the same stunts.

As such, Mandy, Charlotte and I decided it would be best if we waited until after the match to spend any time with them. Charlotte worked on her homework in the common room with Stephan Flint, which I found irritating. I sometimes avoided working with Charlotte just to stay away from what would surely have been a prickly situation with Flint.

One evening, Mandy and I were sitting in chairs by the fire, doing our homework. Charlotte and Flint were working nearby; close enough for me to talk to Charlotte if I wanted to, but far enough away for me to be okay with Flint being there. During a lull in our conversation, I heard them discussing Quidditch. Flint had the gall to tell Charlotte that he'd rather have played Keeper, which only made me more annoyed that he was a Beater on the team and I wasn't.

"It's going to be a great game," said Mandy, who had been listening too. "I hope we win, I'm tired of the Gryffindors being such gits."

"I don't think a Slytherin victory is going to stop them being gits, but it'd be nice," I said, labelling a constellation on my star chart.

"You should practice for Quidditch again this week," said Mandy. "What if something happens? You never know, you might play in the match again…"

"That's very unlikely to happen, Mandy. You saw how I played last time…"

"Yeah, but you don't usually fall off your broom. They thought you were great until then." She finished writing a sentence, set down her quill, and closed her textbook. "Could you give this book back to Charlotte?" she asked.

"You do it."

"I just spell-checked your essay."

"Oh, okay. Thanks," I said, picking up the book. I carried it over to where Charlotte and Flint were sitting.

"My neighbour's kids try to play Quidditch in their garden," Charlotte was saying. "They're only three years old and have toy brooms that go about a foot off the ground. It's so cute."

"Yeah, that's just like Marcus… my nephew, I'm sure he will be great at Quidditch. Even though he's really young - he's about two - I'm going to train him to be as good a Quidditch player as I am."

"Then you won't need to teach him much, will you?" I scoffed.

"Shut up, you want to be on the team, don't you?" Charlotte hissed quietly. I didn't quite know what she was getting at – how would being nice to Flint help me get on the team? That was Simms's business and the team had been chosen months ago. I handed the book back to Charlotte, said nothing to Flint and walked back to my chair.

I found out what they meant later that day, when word got out about Simms. Apparently, he had a week's worth of detention for starting a fight with a Gryffindor, and couldn't play in Saturday's game. My dislike for him increased considerably. There was no need for such aggressive behaviour just over a Quidditch game.

On Wednesday I was approached by Stephan Flint, backup Quidditch Captain, who told me he'd be playing Keeper for Saturday's match. "Charlotte has told me that despite our last match, you are a respectable Beater," he said, though I could hear the disdain in his voice. I'd have bet ten Galleons Charlotte put him up to this, and if it weren't for her talking with him so often earlier, he'd never come up and talk to me. "Do you think you can play Beater on Saturday? And I mean play well; not like last time. You'd have to practise tomorrow and Friday with the team for several hours, and we'll have to change all our tactics. You'd better practise outside of the team practise too."

"Yes," I said. "I'm so sorry about last match… It won't happen again. I want Slytherin to beat Gryffindor just as much as you do."

"Especially after that Gryffindor Peakes landed our Captain in detention," Flint seethed. "I can't believe that bigoted prick. We have to win this game for Simms."

"Er… what?" Flint's story wasn't exactly matching up with the one I had heard from the various unreliable sources where I'd gotten my information. "I heard Simms _started_ the fight."

"Yeah, well he was standing up for Rabnott. Turns out Rabnott is gay, and Peakes outed him to the entire Gobstones Club."

I could only stare at Flint, shocked. "Wow," I finally said. "Clearly I underestimated Simms." And poor Russell – I couldn't even imagine how difficult this all was for him now.

He studied me, scowling. "I'm not offering you a spot because I like you at all. I just know that Bulstrode is the only reserve Beater and his tryout was rubbish."

Despite the snub, I smiled. He thought I was a good player, he just didn't want to tell me so because he disliked me. "When is practise tonight?"

"At seven. Don't be late."

So that night I had Quidditch practise, for the first time in my life. With me as a new member, the team would have to play a bit differently to what they were used to with Flint as Beater and Simms as Keeper. I had never been more nervous; I was more nervous than I had been during our last game, in fact. Last time they'd had no other option but to use me as a Beater, but now if I didn't do well with the team, they might replace me before the match. I swung my Cleansweep over my shoulder and hoped for the best.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: As always, only the original characters and the plot are mine. The rest of the credit goes to J.K. Rowling (and to the Beatles for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band")**


	12. Flying Together, Falling Apart

_I ran out to the shed in the back garden, and grabbed Nathan's new Nimbus 1000 broom. It was an amazing broom; it had just been released a few months ago, and it was the best broom I'd ever seen. I had an old Shooting Star that didn't go very fast – Dad was always afraid I'd hurt myself. He said there was no need for a seven-year-old to have a racing broom. Holding tightly to the Nimbus, I soared up in the air._

 _"Get down from my broom!" I heard Nathan call below me as he ran out of the house. "I'm going to play Quidditch with my friends, I need my Nimbus!"_

 _I sighed and flew down to the ground, and scowled when I handed Nathan his broom. "I want to play Quidditch too," I said. I saw Lucius Malfoy and several of Nathan's other friends coming outside the house with their brooms._

 _"Well you can't." He started to walk off with his broom. "Let's go, guys," he said to his friends. I remained standing there with my arms crossed._

 _As they approached Nathan, I heard one of them say to him, "Hey, there are only five of us, including you. Our teams will be uneven."_

 _"I can play!" I exclaimed, running after them._

 _"No, go back inside," said Nathan._

 _One of Nathan s friends turned to him as they walked. "What's wrong Nathan, don't want to play Quidditch with your little sister? Why not?" He laughed. They walked past me down the hill to an open bit of field. I marched off moodily and got my Shooting Star, and flew aimlessly around the garden. I kept watching them from a distance as I flew._

 _After a few minutes, they stopped playing and appeared to be arguing. I came back down and walked a little closer, but far enough away that it didn't seem like I was trying to spy on them or anything. Then Nathan flew down and walked over to where I was standing._

 _"Er – so, you can play if you want to," he said. "We don't have even numbers and it's not really working."_

 _"Really?" I was so excited. "Yes! I want to be on Lucius's team." Lucius had the best hair of any of Nathan's friends – it was blonde and shoulder length, and looked perfect. I was really jealous of it._

 _"No, if you're going to play, you're on my team and you're a Beater," said Nathan._

 _"I don't have a bat."_

 _"Use a log or something."_

 _"Are you sure this is a good idea?" asked another of Nathan's friends as he came back with me. "We were doing fine, we don't need a six-year-old on our team."_

 _"Seven!" I said indignantly, picking up a thick stick I would use as a bat._

 _"It's fine, Gawain," Nathan said to his friend. "She knows how to fly. But if have a problem with it, you can switch to the other team. Jack, you're on my team now with me and Melanie."_

 _Jack and Gawain switched places, although Jack didn't look too happy, but once I successfully hit a ball at Gawain and he had to swerve and couldn't score a goal, Jack seemed much happier, and Gawain was quite surprised. After a while, I was rather enjoying being a Beater._

 _At the end of the game, Jack congratulated me. "You were pretty good," he admitted. "You should play Quidditch when you start at Hogwarts."_

 _"Great job, sis," said Nathan, smiling as he and his friends walked back to the house. I skipped back to the broom shed with my Shooting Star and decided I'd definitely be a Beater, and maybe even eventually Captain of my house Quidditch team at Hogwarts._

* * *

"Eat something," said Mandy. I looked at the piece of toast on my plate. I wasn't very hungry, but I knew I should eat, so I took a bite. The Quidditch match was today, and I felt nervousness and a strong desire to prove myself, after the fiasco of our last match. I had been thinking back to my first real Quidditch game nearly ten years ago in which I'd had to prove myself, when I was seven and playing on a team of thirteen-year-old boys, and I'd done remarkably well then. Maybe this game would be like that one.

After all, the Slytherin Quidditch team had warmed up to me a little after my first practice with them Thursday night. It was a very good practice, and boded well for today's game. Friday had been much more difficult, as it was snowing, but I thought the team was working together well.

"Oh, Merlin, look at them," said Charlotte.

I looked up from the toast I'd been blankly staring at. On the other side of the Great Hall, the Gryffindor Quidditch team, led by James, had leapt up on the table and were parading down the length of the table, holding their brooms high in the air and yelling. The Gryffindors seated at the table were clapping and cheering, except Lily and another prefect, who looked disgusted with the team's behaviour. Professor McGonagall stood up from the staff table immediately, an enraged expression on her face. She hurried down to the Gryffindor table just as James and the rest of the team jumped off the table.

Although this display was a bit over the top, they had every right to be confident. Gryffindor had won every game since James became Captain last year. They'd had the Quidditch Cup last year as well. Slytherin had lost quite impressively to Gryffindor last year, and I hoped it wouldn't happen this time, but Gryffindor were an extremely strong team.

I saw Flint stand up at the other end of the table, and he signalled to us to get up and head towards the Quidditch pitch. I picked up my broomstick and my half-eaten toast and joined the six other Slytherin Quidditch players as we left the Great Hall to a chorus of cheers from the Slytherins still finishing their breakfast.

* * *

It was very cold out and there were at least eight inches of snow on the field, but thankfully it was not currently snowing. We walked down to the field, changed into our green Quidditch robes, and listened to Flint discuss strategies. I hated listening to Flint, but this time I hung onto his every word because it mattered and I wanted to do the best I could in this game. This was it.

"Here comes Gryffindor, led by Captain James Potter!" I heard the commentator's voice say. It was Mary Macdonald again; why they had let a Gryffindor commentate for a game in which Gryffindor's team was playing was beyond me. Loud cheers filled the stands. Then I heard "And Slytherin!" followed by a considerably lower volume of cheers. We walked out onto the field.

"Slytherin reserve captain Stephan Flint is leading the Slytherins in this match, in the position of Keeper!" Macdonald's voice rang out. "And in Flint's original place as Beater is Melanie Hastings, who played last time as a substitute." I was grateful she didn't add "and fell off her broom."

"Captains shake hands," said Madame Hooch. Flint and James shook each other's hands, though each looked like they might be trying to inflict pain on the other. But this generally happened in all games, especially when Slytherin was involved.

"And they're off! Gryffindor Chaser James Potter has the Quaffle, and he's heading for the goal hoops! He dodges a Bludger from Slytherin Beater Nott! Potter passes to Kirke, who scores! Ten-zero to Gryffindor!" The stands erupted in cheers. "Now Slytherin Chaser Lim has the Quaffle! Here comes Derrick, Lim passes to Derrick – ouch! that must've hurt - he's just been hit by a Bludger from Taing."

Kirke of Gryffindor took the Quaffle and started zooming towards the goal hoops. I sent a Bludger rocketing towards him, using the stealthy but very difficult Bludger Backbeat hit. It didn't hit Kirke, but it made him swerve off course and drop the Quaffle. Robins, another Gryffindor Chaser, caught it and headed for the goal hoops. I went after him, eyeing a Bludger soaring nearby. Flint blocked Robins's goal, but James got the Quaffle afterwards. I hit a Bludger at him forcefully. Friends we may have been, but on the Quidditch pitch we were old rivals again.

"Potter takes it! He scores! Twenty-zero to Gryffindor! And wait – Gryffindor Seeker Cadwallader might have seen the Snitch! He's speeding off toward the ground! There goes Warrington after him, they're really picking up speed…"

I couldn't believe they'd seen it this early in the game. Slytherin had zero points and Gryffindor's Seeker was already much closer to the Snitch, which would have gotten Gryffindor a hundred and fifty points. I saw a Bludger and swung my bat at it with all my might, towards Cadwallader.

"Cadwallader's almost there – look out! He dodges a Bludger from Hastings… but now the Snitch is gone. Warrington's just plowed into the ground…"

It seemed our Seeker had only been watching Gryffindor's Seeker, and forgotten to stop when Cadwallader swerved. Warrington got off the ground and back on his broom, though he looked to be in considerable pain. If he had to race against Cadwallader again, he'd probably lose unless he was already miles ahead. After our Seeker's mishap, Slytherin's team got a bit nastier. Richard Nott actually hit Kirke with his bat, and Flint grabbed Robins's broom as Robins tried to score. "Penalty! Slytherins are cheating!"

Slytherin was getting farther and farther behind – soon the score was eighty to twenty with Gryffindor in the lead. After the fourth foul on Gryffindor, Flint finally addressed the cheating and snapped at Nott and Derrick to play fair in order to keep Gryffindor from getting more penalty shots. And in fact, Slytherin started doing much better. Soon it was eighty to fifty, Gryffindor leading… ninety to seventy… then we were tied. It seemed that we had a chance at winning. I chased every Bludger I saw, as fast as I could, and hit them with so much force that I thought my arms would soon fall off.

Richard Nott, the other Beater who I really disliked, cheered as a Bludger I hit prevented James from scoring. Branstone made a spectacular goal from halfway across the field. Lim scored right under the Gryffindor Keeper's nose. The Slytherin section of the stands was going wild. And then – Warrington was speeding towards the Slytherin hoops, Cadwallader right behind him. I temporarily lost focus on the Bludgers and just watched the Seekers. Warrington's arm was out – he'd gotten the Snitch! _Slytherin had won!_

I heard Mary Macdonald curse into the magical megaphone, but more than that I heard the roar of Slytherins clapping and cheering, my teammates screaming with joy, a jumble of congratulations. I wasn't really sure what was happening around me, but I felt arms around my shoulders; as we landed back on the snowy ground, we were all gathered together around Warrington in a huge group hug. I had tears in my eyes; I was so proud of Slytherin for once. Slytherin had just beat Gryffindor for the first time in years. Maybe we wouldn't win the Quidditch cup, but we had just won a game and I had helped to do it.

The Slytherin common room was full of celebration when we walked in. Even Snape was thrilled and gave me an awkward high-five; he was glad to see James's team lose. The party lasted until well into the night, and I could not remember another instance when I'd been so proud of my fellow Slytherins.

As I technically wasn't a member of the team, I stayed mostly out of the spotlight, and instead sat with Russell on the outskirts. "You all right?" I asked him over the booming Hobgoblins song on the wireless.

He smiled humourlessly. "Yeah. You were right, you know – it's mostly blown over by now. Occasionally I get stares while I'm walking in the corridors, but… it's actually almost liberating to not be hiding such a huge secret anymore."

I nodded. "I'm glad to hear it," I said sincerely, and rested a hand on his arm. Then I saw a large bowl of popcorn next to his chair and lunged at it. "That's where all the popcorn went! Russ, you thief!"

A laugh finally escaped him. "It's not actually very good. I've been throwing it at people for the past hour."

"I want in. Look, there's Mandy!" A white puff of popcorn bounced off her shoulder. "How long do you think it will take her to notice?"

* * *

The only thing negatively impacted by Slytherin's victory was Mandy's and my friendship with the Gryffindor boys. I was sure it was temporary though; it was just because James was disappointed about losing to Slytherin. But every time I passed James and Sirius in the hallway, it was almost like we were in third year again – they'd cast Slipping Jinxes on me so I found myself constantly slipping as if there were water on the floor. I grew quite tired of falling on my backside every time I walked past the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, and hoped they'd get over Gryffindor's loss soon.

And sure enough, after about a week, it had calmed down and we were able to talk to them again without fearing we'd sprout extra ears or slip on the floor. Of course, there always was that small chance – it tended to happen when your friends were the biggest troublemakers in the school.

One evening, Mandy and I were walking along the seventh-floor corridor towards the Gryffindor common room. We heard a loud group of people coming from the opposite direction, and soon enough, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter came around a corner laughing, their arms around each other's shoulders. James had a large folded piece of parchment that he was tucking into his robes with his free hand, and as he did so he dropped several wrapped packages from Honeydukes. Remus was carrying a large bag from Zonko's. James stopped to pick up the things he'd dropped, and the others kept walking. "Blueberry scone!" said Peter to the Fat Lady, and tripped spectacularly into the portrait hole.

I laughed. "Er, hi," I said to Remus and Sirius as they approached to follow Peter into the room.

"Hey there beautiful," said Sirius loudly and reached his hand out to ruffle my hair.

"I – what?" I asked, ducking away from Sirius's hand. "Were you in Hogsmeade? How did you get there?"

"We flew on dragons," he said casually, and turned to go into the portrait hole. I caught a strong whiff of firewhisky, and rolled my eyes.

Behind them, James stood up, carrying his Honeydukes purchases, and hurried to catch up to them. He was singing a Hobgoblins song and making up his own lyrics, as it was obvious he couldn't remember the real ones. "Hi!" he said enthusiastically when he saw us. "Chocolate?" He handed Mandy one of the wrapped packages from Honeydukes, and practically skipped into the portrait hole. The portrait shut behind him.

Mandy and I turned to look at each other wordlessly. For several moments we just stood there comprehending the weirdness that had just happened. Then we burst out laughing.

"Well, I'm sure they'd be fun to talk to tonight," I said. "I wonder if they brought any firewhisky back?"

Mandy laughed. "I hope not, they definitely don't need any more… Do you want some of this chocolate?"

"Sure," I said. She broke off a piece, handed half of it to me, and we stood there in the corridor, eating the chocolate.

After a little while, I wondered aloud, "Why are we still here?"

"I dunno… Let's go in. Blueberry scone."

The portrait swung forward to reveal far less noise and laughter than we had anticipated, and Lily Evans and Mary Macdonald, seated in the window seat, looked up from the pages of _Witch Weekly_ upon our arrival. "If you're looking for the boys, they all went upstairs," Lily told us. I heard a loud laugh echoing down the stairs; it sounded like James. "You're welcome to stay though," she continued. "They gave me this piece of chocolate I'd love to share, and we've also got this absurd personality quiz in _Witch Weekly_ that we all _need_ to take. What's your zodiac sign?"

* * *

The last week of January passed by quickly with the exciting prospect of Apparition lessons beginning on the first Saturday of February. And finally February arrived. On Thursday evening, Mandy and I were returning from the library when we saw James, Sirius, and Peter standing in a group about ten feet ahead of us. We were about to approach them when James pulled something shiny out of his bag and the three of them disappeared.

They were under their Invisibility Cloak, and definitely up to something. I looked at Mandy, who grinned and silently motioned me towards her. After a second she started tiptoeing in the direction the boys had vanished.

"How do you intend to follow someone invisible?" I whispered as I walked alongside her.

"They were facing that way," she said, pointing. "An Invisibility Cloak doesn't prevent you from making noise. It'll be like that time when we heard them say the Gryffindor common room password in the hallway!"

I put my finger to my lips as we continued, lurking around corners and crouching behind suits of armour to stay out of sight if they turned around.

Mandy tugged on my sleeve. "I just saw someone's heel, way up ahead. We're going the right way."

We followed them to the entrance hall. "I bet they're just going outside," I said.

"Let's get to the door before they do and freak them out by opening it," Mandy suggested. Before I could stop her, Mandy leapt out from behind a large stone statue of Circe. "Surprise," she said. "Where do you think you're going this time of night?"

Sirius appeared out of the cloak a few feet from us, and he looked furious. James and Peter stepped out after him, and they both looked angry as well.

"Just a joke," said Mandy, her eyes wide with anxiety at seeing the anger in our friends' faces. "It was Mel's idea, really – we saw you and thought we'd just give you a surprise…" She reached out towards me, grabbed my arm and pulled me out from behind the statue as well.

"It was _not_ my idea," I hissed.

"Why are you following us around?" Sirius demanded, pointing his wand at the two of us. "Wondering what we're up to? Thought it'd be a bit of fun to spy on us?"

"Are you trying to get us expelled too?" asked James.

"Wouldn't be the first time a Slytherin has done that," said Peter.

"No, we just… I'm sorry, we didn't mean anything by it!" I pleaded. "We didn't know you'd get so upset, we just thought it'd be a joke!" Where was Remus? He'd be able to calm his friends down and stop a row from escalating. But he was missing.

"We're leaving," said Mandy, giving up. "Carry on doing whatever you were doing. Sorry we interrupted your little secret meeting." We sped away from them, but after we'd turned the corner, we slowed down in order to be quiet so we could keep an ear out for Filch's cat Mrs. Woodhouse or someone else unpleasant who'd punish us for being out after curfew.

On Friday, Mandy and I had put this altercation behind us, and we walked into Potions discussing Apparition, which was to begin tomorrow, but had to abandon this lively discussion when, in class, we were given the difficult task of inventing an antidote for a blended poison.

After flipping through the pages of _Advanced Potion-Making_ twice without seeing anything useful, I began glancing around at what others were doing to get ideas. Behind me off to the right was the table where the Gryffindor boys usually sat. Remus was not there, but the other three looked very tired and ill, and were covered in scratches again. Sirius had a gash on his face but he seemed unconcerned, the same usual haughty expression on his face as if nothing was out of the ordinary. But when he saw me looking, he glared at me and then looked away.

I mentioned this to Mandy, and she looked back at their table. "I don't know, I guess they're still angry at us. It looks like they went into the Forbidden Forest, too. This isn't the first time that's happened, either – they just go in and run into all sorts of things out there. I hope they're all right… But you should be working on your antidote, not looking around. It's already been fifteen minutes and there's nothing in your cauldron."

"I don't understand Golpalott's Third Law! Are you supposed to put in all the separate antidotes and then something else, or invent a new antidote entirely?"

"It says in the chapter," she said distractedly, pouring a vial of something red into her cauldron, where the potion turned a gold color. "Er… the sum of the combined antidotes is… more than the separate ones – oh no, too much frog blood…"

Rather than starting my potion, which was sure to be a disaster, I kept looking around. Charlotte was eyeing Russell's cauldron as she poured something into her own, but since she wasn't watching, she poured it all over the table. That wasn't too unusual… I looked back at the Gryffindors. I was concerned for them, but it was also possible that this wasn't that big a deal for them, if they did this a lot. After all, we'd never really paid much attention to them in previous years, because they didn't have all the same classes as we did until after OWL's at the end of last year. But I still wondered why they would do something like this on a regular basis – they didn't seem to get much out of it except injuries and a lack of sleep. I watched them for a while, but eventually decided I needed to be working on my potion.

At the end of class, my potion was just as awful as usual. I couldn't even try to copy Mandy because she had a different poison than I did. Slughorn came by to inspect my antidote and had to lean away, gagging – it was hissing and thick grey smoke billowed out from the cauldron. I cleaned up in a hurry, haphazardly throwing things in my bag, hoping to talk to James, Sirius, and Peter and apologise for whatever we might have done. I really wanted to talk to Remus, as he was more understanding and hadn't been responsible for most of the post-Quidditch jinxing, but he was the only one not in class. But the three of them disappeared out the door too quickly, and I could hear them laughing all the way down the corridor. I supposed I'd have another chance.

* * *

The next day, we went down to the Great Hall in the morning for our Apparition lessons. The usual long tables had been removed; the hall looked much larger without them. After about ten minutes of milling around and waiting for everyone to show up, we heard a somewhat wheezy voice greet us and we all looked up.

"Good morning," said a slight man in the front of the Hall, who looked like he'd just been caught in a windstorm. He was pale and had very light colored hair and eyebrows, which stood out against his dark Ministry robes. The Heads of House were assembled next to him. "My name is Wilkie Twycross," continued the man, "and I will be instructing you in Apparition for the next twelve weeks, by which point many of you will be able to take your Apparition Tests.

"Normally, one cannot Apparate within Hogwarts, but for the purposes of this course, the enchantments have been lifted for an hour inside this Hall only. Now if everyone could please find a place where you each have five feet of space around you."

There was a lot of noise as people tried to find a space, and the Heads of House had to separate people and find places for them, as left to our own devices we could not all find places near our friends.

Twycross waved his wand and wooden hoops appeared in front of everyone in the hall. "Apparition has three components: Destination, Determination, Deliberation! These are the three D's which you must remember! You must concentrate upon your desired destination. You will be trying to Apparate into the hoop in front of you. Everyone focus on your destination now."

I stared at the hoop. Twycross continued about being determined, and turning on the spot with deliberation. How exactly did that work? Was it just _thinking_ while spinning that enabled people to Apparate?

"On the count of three, now… One… two…three!"

I spun around and simply found myself facing the other direction; I hadn't gone anywhere. Mandy was waving her arms around wildly to stay standing up. Several people had fallen over. One boy fell into his hoop and thought he had actually Apparated.

We had to try again several times, but Twycross's instructions seemed useless. At the end of the hour, all that had happened for me was a strong feeling of dizziness from spinning around so much. No one had managed to Apparate, and it seemed like a waste of an hour.

"Well that was thrilling," said Charlotte as we left. "Why were we looking forward to this again?"

"I don't know. I always imagined it being much more fun," I agreed.

"I always imagined not having to puke afterwards."

"At least we don't have to do it again until next Saturday. And we have Hogsmeade to look forward to after Apparition!"

"But you'd better not be thinking about it during Apparition," chided Mandy, "or you won't be sufficiently Determined. Deliberation! Destination!" she cried, raising her fist in the air as she listed each one, with the air of one leading a rally. Charlotte and I laughed. "Only eleven more weeks to go, unless we fail the test!"

At least we had other things to entertain us; Mandy's seventeenth birthday was the following Tuesday. Charlotte and I woke her up early and gave her presents and watched her open all the gifts while she still wasn't quite awake.

"Don't forget, the best present of all!" said Alanna as she slid out of bed, having decided that she would be unable to sleep in any more due to us making so much noise. "No Potions on Tuesdays!"

"Fantastic," said Mandy. "That's a much better present than being woken up at _six o clock_. Mel and Charlotte, you two are like little kids on Christmas."

* * *

The Gryffindors' odd behaviour towards us lasted for several days. Fortunately, the next time I saw them, Remus was with them, just as friendly as always, but Sirius seemed wary of us, like he didn't trust us. He'd stay in a moody silence all the time and I knew he was still stewing about what we had done. I wondered if the four of them had ever cared that much for a group of Slytherin girls anyway, as they were rather popular and had plenty of other friends.

I had no idea what had happened, or whether I'd done something wrong, but regardless, it seemed unlikely that we'd end up spending much time with them again. We went back to hanging around with people we'd spent much of our time with before we'd gotten to know the Gryffindors.

One evening, Mandy, Charlotte and I were having dinner with Russell Rabnott and Hector Branstone. I was looking over at the Gryffindor table and saw them laughing. "I don't know why you're so concerned about them," said Russell as he helped himself to some steak and kidney pie. "Yeah, they're funny, when they're not hexing you in the hallway… but you have other friends."

"I know, and we only really got to know them this year… but I do miss them," said Mandy.

"We never had a lot in common with them except a mutual love of irritating Filch," said Charlotte. "But that was a lot of fun."

"Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that you couldn't walk within ten feet of them because they'd jinx you?" Russell asked.

"They were just jealous Slytherin won the Quidditch match," I said reasonably.

"As they should have been," said Hector. "That was the best game Slytherin has played in a while! We were fantastic. Simms said he tried to watch from the window during his detention, and that hearing Slytherin win made his day. I think he was a bit upset that we won without him though."

We reminisced about the Quidditch match for a little while, and then Mandy stood up to leave. At the same time, I saw the four Gryffindor boys get up from their table aross the room and leave the Great Hall. "I'm going to the library, if any of you want to come with me," said Mandy.

Charlotte and Hector both expressed interest in going to the library to work on Divination. I thought I'd go as well, but after seeing the Gryffindors leave, and having talked about them at dinner, I decided to visit them. After all, it looked like they'd been in a good mood at dinner, and I wanted to apologise for anything I might have said that had made them turn their backs on us. So I told Mandy I'd see her at the library in a few minutes.

I walked up to the seventh floor. In the hall containing the entrance to Gryffindor's common room, I began to wonder whether this was a good idea. But as long as I was here now, I may as well visit… "Blueberry scone," I told the Fat Lady. The portrait did not swing off the wall to reveal the doorway though – the password must have changed. "Er… chocolate chip scone?" What kind of passwords did the Gryffindor common room usually have anyway? Maybe they were the opposite of Slytherin's passwords. "Muggle-born? Godric? Lion?"

Nothing happened. I was about to turn around and leave when the portrait swung out and I heard Sirius's voice coming from inside. "Have you got your mirror? I don't want to sit there just sorting pickled mouse brains for five hours."

"Yeah, I've got it."

"Is anyone coming out, or am I just going to wait here?" asked the Fat Lady irritably. "You're not going in, you didn't have the password," she said to me.

Sirius stepped out of the portrait hole, his bag over his shoulder. He scowled when he saw me. "Coming to spy on us again?" he asked.

"I came to visit!" I cried. "I used to do that, remember, before you became such an arse!" I looked at the portrait hole, where James was leaning against the wall, and then back to Sirius. "I should have realized you'd only want to have Slytherins around when it's _convenient_ for you – but no other time, because it would ruin your reputation. You're too cool for me, huh?"

"What are you talking about?" asked James, taken aback by my outburst.

I sighed. "Ever since we followed you out of the castle that night, you've all been so formal to us, like we're not friends. I'm sorry we upset you with that joke, I really didn't think it'd go over so badly… We thought it'd be funny to startle you, that's all – we've always played tricks on each other, haven't we?"

James and Sirius glanced at each other, and then James looked back at me. "You're right," he said finally. "I understand it was a joke. By the way, I don't think we're too cool to hang around with you, that's ridiculous."

It did sound ridiculous, and immature, now that I thought about it. I was glad I was wrong.

"You really weren't trying to get us in trouble?" Sirius clarified, eyes narrowed.

"Of course not," I insisted. Sirius appeared unconvinced, and glanced to James, who looked perfectly content.

"He'll come around," James advised me with a smile.

"Who's there?" asked a voice from inside the common room, and then Peter showed up behind James. "Oh, it's you," he said happily. "I thought I heard your voice. Do you want to play Gobstones?"

"Thanks Peter," I said, "but I should get going, I have homework to finish in the library. Maybe tomorrow for Gobstones…"

I headed down the corridor to the library, while Sirius stalked off towards his detention without another word.

Mandy, Charlotte, and Hector were sitting at a table with quite a few stacks of textbooks. Charlotte looked bored as she leafed through Divination books and threw them onto a pile, and Mandy was absorbed in _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six_. Hector was writing a long essay, glancing now and then at a book with odd, ethereal illustrations; his dark brown skin was smudged with ink.

"Hi," I said glumly, sitting down in an empty seat.

"Hi Melanie," said Charlotte. "Hector, did you find anything useful in that book? These are all rubbish."

"All of Divination is rubbish," I teased.

"You just wait, I'll predict the most gruesome death for you – maybe trampled by a hippogriff – and then you'll wish you hadn't said that."

"Can't wait!" I got a quill and ink bottle out of my bag.

Hector finished writing his sentence and then picked up his book, which was called _Advanced Seeing for the Untrained Inner Eye_. "This one? Yeah, it was sort of helpful…" He ripped a page out, which he set down by his parchment again, and handed the rest of the book to Charlotte. There was a shriek behind us, and Madame Pince, the librarian, stepped out from behind a bookshelf, her eyes wide. She swooped upon our table like a vulture.

"Look what you have done to that book!" she hissed, pointing a clawlike finger at the page on the table and then at the book in Charlotte's hands. Charlotte merely stared insolently back at her. Madame Pince circumnavigated the table, peering at all the books as if to make sure none of them had met the same fate.

"You have desecrated – befouled – _ruined_ a library book!"

"We'll put the page back in," said Hector. "It just takes a quick _Reparo_ —"

Madame Pince looked back at us threateningly. "You have no respect for books," she said. "Day after day I have to deal with students like you, abusing my books! If I hear one more page rip—"

Hector sighed, and fixed the page. "Back to normal, see?" he said. Madame Pince gave us all a suspicious glance and then disappeared behind another bookshelf. "Mad old bat," Hector muttered under his breath as she walked away.

No sooner had they started to work again – I hadn't even got out my parchment yet – and we heard laughing coming from a table concealed by some bookshelves, followed by a girl's voice crying "Stop!"

We looked up, but the disturbance seemed to have ceased. Then we saw Lester Avery, Charlotte's brother, coming from around the shelf. When he saw Charlotte, he ducked back behind the shelf.

"What are you doing, Lester?" she asked suspiciously. There was no answer. It was stupid of him to hide, because obviously she'd seen him, and this just made it look like he was up to something. She scowled and picked up her Divination book again, but then we heard the voices from behind the bookshelves again.

"I thought you were going to go, Avery?" a voice whispered. "Or did you come back to watch the Mudblood? _Imperio!_ "

There was a loud crash. "You idiot, someone will hear you," said another voice, and then all I could hear was a faint buzzing.

"Do you hear that buzzing?" I asked my tablemates.

"Yeah…" said Charlotte. She stood up and walked around the bookshelf. I followed instantly. There at a table was Lester Avery, Calvin Mulciber, Evan Rosier, and a Hufflepuff girl who kept running into the bookshelves. Severus Snape was sitting in a chair to the side of the table, poring over his old, marked-up copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_.

"Lester!" Charlotte cried indignantly. "You're using the Imperius Curse on someone? I heard that, you know. It's illegal."

He said something back, but we couldn't hear him – only the buzzing. Mulciber laughed. Snape looked up from his book and flicked his wand, and the buzzing stopped. "Well. How nice of you to butt in." Then he resumed watching the Hufflepuff girl, and then back to his book.

"I was just saying," said Lester, "I don't know what you heard, but I didn't do anything. She seems to be really tired… bet it's all the studying for her O.W.L.s, maybe she hasn't slept in a few days—"

"People don't run into walls like this when they're tired," said Charlotte as another shower of books cascaded off the shelf. "You take that curse off her."

Mulciber looked up at Charlotte and me insolently. "You want to be next?" he sneered. I wished Mark were here to see this – then maybe he wouldn't idolize Mulciber so much.

"You have a problem with this, but you don't seem to mind when your little Gryffindor friends do it," said Snape frostily.

"They don't use Dark Magic!" I said hotly. "They would never do anything like this!"

"Oh, is that right?" Snape suddenly looked very menacing. "I don't think you know half of what they do."

Hector showed up behind my shoulder. "It'll only be a matter of time before Madame Pince sees this," he told us. "You know she's probably lurking around here right now."

"Oh, she can't hear us… just some buzzing," said Lester.

"Run along now, before we practice the Cruciatus Curse," said Mulciber. He laughed.

I was appalled, and drew out my wand. " _You've been practicing the Cruciatus—_ "

"Well, we certainly will if you keep hanging around."

"Lester, you shouldn't be doing this," Charlotte insisted. She stood over him, and as she was rather tall, she looked scary. But Lester stood up too, and he was a couple of inches taller than she was. Charlotte continued, "I don't think Mum will be pleased when I tell her that you're using Unforgivable Curses on other students."

"Bet she will." Lester pointed his wand at the girl, who instantly stopped running into the shelves, and looked around terrified at the knot of Slytherins surrounding her and the books all over the floor. She rubbed her face in pain and dashed away, and I thought I heard a sob as she went. Mulciber, Snape, and Lester all turned back to their textbooks, and Charlotte, Hector and I walked back to our table. Although I still had yet to get out parchment, I decided I was done with my essay for the night.

Apparently Charlotte had had enough as well. "He doesn't know what he's getting into," she muttered. "Sometimes I'm really proud to have him as a brother, and then sometimes he's…" She shoved the ripped copy of _Advanced Seeing for the Untrained Inner Eye_ into her bag forcefully.

"What happened?" said Mandy, finally looking up from her book. "Did _you_ make that girl run out crying?"

"Didn't you hear?" I asked. "You didn't hear what they were saying?"

"Of course she didn't," said Charlotte, "Snape said he'd done some buzzing charm." She turned to Mandy. "My brother and his friends thought it would be amusing to try out the Imperius Curse on someone."

"Was he with Mulciber?" asked Mandy darkly. "I heard him saying something about making someone carve up the ice and jump into the frozen lake last week."

"Yeah. Well I can't get anything done, I'm just going to go to sleep." She hoisted her bag over her shoulder and started to walk out. I threw my quill in my bag and followed.

We walked in near silence down the stairs. "The Cruciatus Curse," she muttered as we neared the Slytherin dungeon.

"Maybe he'll grow out of it… And I think it's Mulciber that's the worst, not Lester."

"Yeah… maybe."

"Forget predicting my death," I said, "you should predict a horrible one for Mulciber instead."


	13. About Time

Nothing noteworthy happened during our second Apparition class. Everyone was just as terrible as last week, although it seemed that possibly fewer people fell over. At least we had Hogsmeade to look forward to – so that afternoon, Mandy, Charlotte and I headed to Hogsmeade together.

After the three of us had been sitting at a table in the Three Broomsticks for a while, Luke Wilcox walked by our table. He glanced at us briefly, and paused for half a second, but didn't stop to talk to me. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw him at the counter talking to the barmaid Madam Rosmerta, and then he walked past our table again with a butterbeer. When he was out of sight I turned back and pretended I'd been paying attention to what Charlotte was saying about Narcissa Black and Lucius Malfoy's wedding plans. But then I saw Luke wander by a third time. I glanced up. He was walking up to Madame Rosmerta again.

Was he taking several trips to get butterbeer and food, just to walk past our table?

No, that would be ridiculous.

But then what was he doing? I decided to take matters into my own hands.

"I'm going to get another butterbeer," I said suddenly to Mandy and Charlotte.

"Of course you are," said Mandy, rolling her eyes. "We can see who's over there, you know."

I walked up to the counter and stopped a few feet away from Luke. Madame Rosmerta handed Luke a pastry, and I ordered a butterbeer. I noticed that Luke lingered around the counter after getting his food, so I turned to face him as I waited for Madame Rosmerta to get my butterbeer. "Hi, Luke."

"Oh, hi Melanie…" He looked slightly uncomfortable.

I felt the same; I didn't really have anything to say to him other than hello. Nothing had really happened since the last time we had talked, except the beginning of Apparition lessons, which would not be an ideal conversation topic if he hated Apparition as much as I did. And we never really talked about much other than classes. "Er… so are you having a good time?" I asked.

"Yeah, how about you?"

"Yeah…"

There were another few seconds of silence in which I felt awkward and considered that maybe I shouldn't have come up here, and then Madame Rosmerta returned with a butterbeer. I set some coins on the counter, thanked her, and stepped back from the counter a bit. Luke followed. "I never told you - great job in the Quidditch match last month, by the way," he said.

"Thanks… I'm so surprised how it turned out actually, considering our Captain was in the hospital wing and I've never really practised much with the team."

"Well I think you did great. I'm so glad Slytherin won."

"You are?"

"Yeah," he said, and I raised my eyebrows. Luke laughed, and continued, "It means Ravenclaw has a better shot at the Cup. But I'm happy for you too."

"I knew there was a reason you were glad," I said, smiling. "You have a good team. I guess we'll see how it turns out in your other games… If Slytherin doesn't win, it'd be nice if Ravenclaw won the Cup this year."

"I'd love that. Gryffindor has had it for too many years."

"Too true." I laughed.

"So what are your plans for the rest of the afternoon in Hogsmeade?" I asked in what I hoped was an offhand tone.

"I don't know." He shrugged. "My friend who I came with sort of wanted to go back to Hogwarts, he hasn't finished his Arithmancy work for Monday and it'll probably take him hours."

"Arithmancy sounds tough."

"It is. It's difficult, but I actually like it a lot… Anyway, what about you, what are you doing after this?"

"I don't know either." I glanced back at the table where I had been sitting; Mandy and Charlotte immediately looked out the window. They had clearly been watching us.

"Well, do you want to walk around town for a little while before heading back?"

"Yes, I'd love to!" I said, grinning.

"Great!" he said. "I'm going to go get my stuff from my table over there, I'll meet you by the door in a few minutes?"

"Sounds good," I answered. We both walked back to our tables.

Charlotte and Mandy were watching me with interest as I approached. I picked up my cloak from where it was draped over the back of the wooden chair. "Hey, Luke and I are going to go, if that's okay…?"

They smiled. "That's fine," said Mandy. "Have fun!"

"I'm sorry to ditch you… I'll see you when we get back to the castle!"

I put on my cloak and headed for the door. Luke was still at his table, talking to his friend, who looked like he was getting ready to leave as well. Nearly all the tables in the room were full; the Three Broomsticks was one of the most popular places in Hogsmeade, especially on cold days such as today. Standing by the counter were Sirius and James, with half-full tankards of butterbeer, entertaining Madame Rosmerta with a joke.

Luke showed up then, and we walked together out into the snow and down the street. "How about here," suggested Luke, pointing at a small teashop. "I've heard it's nice, have you ever been to Madam Puddifoot's?"

I shook my head, and we turned to go into the teashop. We took three steps into Madam Puddifoot's, but when we saw the sickeningly cute Valentine's Day decorations of confetti and cherubs, we looked at each other uncomfortably and immediately turned back around and left.

"Never mind," he said, brushing a heart-shaped piece of confetti from his shoulder. "I knew they decorated a lot for Christmas, but I had no idea they were so fond of Valentine's Day too…"

I laughed. "It's all right though, there are plenty of other places we can go."

"How about Honeydukes or Zonko's… or Dervish and Banges, they sometimes have fun stuff there."

We browsed through Zonko's first and I was about to buy a large bag of Dungbombs, but Luke looked most unimpressed. "Those aren't allowed…"

"Are you going to confiscate them from me?" I asked, grinning.

"It doesn't look good for me as a prefect to see you buy Dungbombs and not do anything about it."

"Then close your eyes and you won't see."

He took the bag out of my hands and set it back on the shelf. "How about we go to Honeydukes and I buy you some Fizzing Whizbees instead."

I recalled vaguely that my Hogsmeade trip with Remus had been more fun; even though he was a prefect as well, he had had no problem with me buying Whizzing Worms and Nose-Biting Teacups and other things Filch had specifically banned. But I pushed this thought out of my mind – after all, I'd wanted to go with Luke for ages. We headed to Honeydukes and the rest of the afternoon passed wonderfully. Although we did not discuss the Yule Ball, I felt that the awkwardness that had arisen between us surrounding the dance was now dissipated.

As we were wandering through Dervish and Banges, observing all the weird magical instruments and discussing our favorite places to travel during the summers, Luke pointed out that the sun was getting low and we should probably head back.

We started back up the High Street, through the thin layer of slush. As we walked our hands brushed, and the second time it happened I lightly took hold of his hand. He turned to look at me, a slight smile on his face. "My hand was cold," I explained with an air of nonchalance.

He laughed. "Mine too."

We got back to the castle at the end of the wonderful afternoon and lingered in the doorway talking; we were in no hurry to end the afternoon. Eventually we decided we should probably get going, off to our separate common rooms, and my heart thumped wildly as Luke leaned in to kiss me – but then we heard a loud shriek of delight and we jumped apart immediately. Peeves the Poltergeist had just drifted in out of nowhere, and began to throw bits of chalk at us while making smacking noises with his lips.

"Cut it out!" cried Luke, picking up one of the pieces of chalk and throwing it back at him. Peeves did a somersault in midair and zoomed away, cackling obnoxiously. Although he was gone, he had definitely ruined the moment; Luke and I hesitated a bit longer in the doorway, and then simply said goodbye and parted.

When I got back to the Slytherin common room, the encounter with Peeves had done nothing to diminish my feeling of elation from the afternoon in Hogsmeade with Luke (although I was frustrated that Peeves had interrupted us, I knew we'd have another chance). Mandy and Charlotte were sitting on a sofa in the common room and the moment I walked in they eagerly bombarded me with questions, which I dutifully answered until we went up to dinner.

* * *

At dinner, the excited buzz of discussion from all the students talking about their day in Hogsmeade was hushed momentarily when Serena Templeton stood up from the Gryffindor table and dashed out of the Great Hall, clutching a crumpled piece of parchment. Several other girls ran after her. I didn't think much of it until Charlotte caught up with me as we walked back to our common room after dinner. "I heard what happened," she said, her face dark. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

"Serena Templeton's parents are Muggles. They were killed by Death Eaters today; she just got a letter."

"That's… horrible," I said. I didn't know what else to say. I'd never spoken to Serena, but I wished I could reach out to her. This sort of thing was happening entirely too often nowadays. And then an awful thought came to me – I pictured Nathan among the Death Eaters, killing Muggles for fun, and hoped against hope that I was wrong, that I'd only been getting overly paranoid and misreading his letters. Had Nathan killed Serena's parents? The possibility was miniscule, but the fact that it existed at all scared me. The war was splitting up families left and right, and caused decades of trust to crumble. I looked sadly at Charlotte, whose expression was unreadable as always.

After dinner we set to work by the fire in the common room. I was halfway through studying my Potions notes when I saw Calvin Mulciber get up across the room and walk away from the table where he had been sitting. Left there was Mark and his usual group of first-year friends. I set my Potions notes and _Advanced Potion-Making_ down on the sofa next to me, stood up and walked over to Mark's group. The dark-haired girl who had indicated she disliked me last time greeted me with a scowl, but Mark said hello. The others didn't look up.

"How's History of Magic?" I asked them.

"It's okay," answered Mark. "My goblin rebellion paper was rubbish, but at least it's done." He glanced shrewdly at Mulciber's back across the room, then asked me, "Are you here to tell me not to listen to Mulciber again?"

I was caught off-guard at his astuteness, but forced a laugh. "Er, no, I was just saying hi. I'm letting you make up your own mind about Mulciber, although since you mention him, I did witness him putting the Imperius Curse on a Hufflepuff girl last week…"

"Really? That's awful," Mark whispered, and turned to look at where Mulciber had gone, then back at his friends.

The dark-haired girl said, "He was just here helping us with our Defense Against the Dark Arts work. How do we know you're not lying?"

"Why would I lie to you? I'm telling you, I saw it. I know he may be smart and is able to help you with your work and everything, but you want to watch out for him. He likes the Dark Arts. You know – the type the Death Eaters use." Now I pictured a grown-up Mulciber in the Death Eaters. If the Imperius Curse was all fun and games at Hogwarts, he'd certainly be looking for something more deadly when he left school. I shook my head to clear the image away.

The girl rolled her eyes. One of the other kids in the group looked up from his parchment and said to the others, "I told you I didn't like him."

While Mark and his friends discussed whether or not they believed Mulciber had actually used the Imperius Curse, I was consoled by the fact that at least it seemed they disapproved of using that curse – which meant, hopefully, that they were less likely to follow in his footsteps.

* * *

The rest of February passed by with a lot of rain and dismal weather, but it was a very happy month for me. Luke and I were dating – not that it meant a lot to be dating at Hogwarts, since there were very few Hogsmeade weekends – it really just meant that we worked together during Herbology and ate lunch together sometimes. Regardless, I was delighted.

I was on my way to Charms one day during the first week of March, alone for once because Charlotte had had to go back to get her homework and Mandy had stopped by the loo. I turned a corner and exclaimed as I received an unwelcome shock – it felt like I had stuck my head into a bucket of ice water. I had inadvertently walked right through a ghost, who was wearing a doublet, a plumed hat, and a ruff. He was the Gryffindor House ghost, whom I was fairly sure was called Nearly Headless Nick (although he did not look headless, or even nearly headless, to me).

I didn't know if ghosts were sensitive about people accidentally walking through them; I had never really talked with a ghost before. There were quite a few ghosts around Hogwarts, but the only ghosts I knew were Professor Binns, who taught the dreadful History of Magic class, and Moaning Myrtle, who haunted a second-floor girls' toilet and cried if you talked to her. Then of course there was the resident Slytherin House ghost, the Bloody Baron, whom practically everyone avoided, students and ghosts alike; I had never spoken to him in my life. So I had no idea how Nearly Headless Nick would react. "Er, hello… I'm really sorry about that," I said awkwardly.

"It's all right," he said, "one of the things you have to get used to if you're a ghost."

"Does that happen a lot?" I asked.

"Oh, every once in a while. However, I died four hundred and eighty-four years ago, so those few times every so often do add up over the years…"

"How did you die, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I was beheaded, most carelessly and incompetently." He sighed wistfully. "They didn't do it properly, and my head is still attached." He pulled on his left ear, and his head fell onto his shoulder, connected by a little bit of his neck. I gasped.

He pushed his head back onto his neck, smiling wryly, and I got the feeling that he rather enjoyed doing this to see people's reactions.

"I'm sorry, that's awful," I said. I wasn't really sure what else to say; I'd never had a conversation quite like this before.

"Yes, isn't it? I've always wished they had just finished the job."

"Of course…" I said absentmindedly. "It was, er, nice to meet you, but I've got to go to class."

"Certainly. You aren't a Gryffindor, are you?" he asked conversationally. "I don't think I've seen you much before. What house are you in?"

"No, I'm not a Gryffindor. I have to go! Bye!" I ran down the rest of the hallway leaving him rather confused, slowed down, realized I was late for class, and continued running. When I got to class Mandy and Charlotte were both just arriving.

"What took _you_ so long?" asked Charlotte as she pushed the classroom door open. "I thought you'd have been here ages ago, I had to go all the way back to the room to get my essay because I left it on the—"

"Class has started, girls," said Professor Flitwick. He looked for a moment as if he were considering taking points from Slytherin for our tardiness, but decided against it. I supposed this was because we hadn't actually interrupted anything – the classroom was as noisy as ever, as the class was very much about practical application of charms. "We're practicing the Hover Charm."

Mandy and I attempted making each other hover nonverbally, and I couldn't see why we had to use this charm rather than the easier Levitation Charm we'd learned in first year. I was also still not very good at nonverbal magic, which we were supposed to be using, and so I resorted to whispering the incantations. Other people, such as the Hufflepuffs at the table to our left, succeeded with nonverbal incantations but ended up dropping their partners.

Over at the Gryffindors' table, Remus grabbed onto the desk to keep from falling over after Peter's hover charm. James and Sirius laughed. I was startled out of watching them when I lifted off the ground. I looked at Mandy in surprise but she was writing something down.

"Oh – sorry!" said Charlotte, looking over at me from across the table, and I landed back on the ground.

Rashmi Choudhury, the Hufflepuff girl Charlotte was working with, congratulated her. "You got the charm nonverbally!"

"Yeah, but on the wrong person, that was supposed to be you."

Peter looked over and grinned at us. "I just did that to James too, about five minutes ago. This charm is hard."

I laughed. "Yeah, it is." I turned back to face Mandy and practice the charm on her. But I didn't make much progress; Charms class was usually somewhat chaotic with objects flying all over the classroom or noises everywhere, and today was no exception. Hector Branstone sailed across the room, shouting at his partner Andrew Derrick, his fellow Chaser on the Slytherin Quidditch team. "Wrong charm, you idiot!" he laughed.

Derrick looked at his wand, puzzled. "I'm using the right charm, I guess I have the wand motion wrong." He looked down at a paper of notes, and then exclaimed when his eyebrows suddenly grew six inches, extending to his chin, and obscured his view.

I heard some laughter and turned around, and sure enough, James was pointing his wand at Hector, and Sirius was pointing his wand at Derrick.

"Potter! Black!" squeaked Flitwick from the front of the room. Upon hearing who had caused his eyebrow growth, Derrick brushed his long eyebrows out of the way, and muttered something while pointing his wand back at Sirius, and Sirius sprouted horns.

"Derrick!" cried Flitwick. "This is a classroom, not a zoo! You three will all be back here Saturday night for detention."

"Professor," said Sirius between fits of laughter, "I already have plans that night… Detention with McGonagall."

"You'll come on Sunday then."

I watched in amusement as Derrick cut off the long curtain of thick eyebrow hair, but Sirius was unable to remove his horns.

"That's a good look, Pads," said James, looking at Sirius's horns. "You should keep them, I'm sure it will attract the ladies."

"Madame Pomfrey could probably fix it in half a second, she's seen much worse," said Peter.

"Well I know that, Wormtail," said Sirius, "but I'm guessing Flitwick's not going to let me leave right now, class is only half over."

Snape, across the classroom, muttered something and a dark shape shot from the end of his wand towards James, who wasn't looking. Sensing that this could be nothing good coming from Snape, who tended to prefer using more painful jinxes than Derrick, I whispered " _Lepidopterus_ " under my breath, and both Snape and Evan Rosier sitting next to him, were engulfed in a cloud of large butterflies. Nor was I the only one to have done anything; James had very quick reflexes and the instant he'd seen Snape, had made steam come out of Snape's ears and nostrils.

Flitwick was distressed that his classroom kept getting out of control, and gave Snape and Rosier detentions too. I grinned; he hadn't noticed me, and Rosier had gotten detention although he hadn't even done anything. Now that class had quieted down a bit, Mandy and I went back to practicing the nonverbal Hover Charm, and by the end of class I could easily do the charm if I whispered the incantation, but still struggled to do it nonverbally. Mandy and I had accidentally dropped each other several times, so we were somewhat sore from falling, but we left the class in good spirits.

The Gryffindors left just before Mandy, Charlotte and me. As they turned the corner out the door I could hear Peter saying, "That was bold jinxing them during class, Prongs. You were just asking for detention."

"There's no harm in a bit of friendly jinxing," said James. "I even saw Branstone laughing too, it was all good fun. And did you see Hastings do that butterfly one at Snivellus? I'm sure it was her, though Flitwick didn't catch her."

"Really?" asked Sirius. "I would say it was nice of her, but now it means we have detention with Snivellus."

Peter laughed. "Rosier got a detention too, when he didn't do anything."

"Yeah, but I'll bet he was thinking about it," said James.

"And I was being nice, actually," said Sirius. "I considered the Nose-Hair Lengthening Jinx for Derrick, but decided on the eyebrow one instead."

"How thoughtful," said Remus. James looked like he had something to add but at that moment Vivian Bell walked in from around a corner and sidled up to James, whose face broke into a grin upon seeing her. He wrapped his arms around her, and they began a conversation with their faces two inches apart.

Lily Evans spared them a curious glance as she continued walking down the corridor, and Sirius made a gagging noise and then turned to Remus and Peter. "I'll catch up with you later, I'm going to stop by the hospital wing."

"Oh, you decided not to keep the horns then?" I asked loudly as Sirius walked by. "Shame… I was really into it."

He turned around with a sort of amused smirk on his face. "Well, you know it was all for you."

I snorted and rolled my eyes, and when Sirius turned back around and continued walking I wolf-whistled after him. When I looked back at Mandy, she was regarding me with a suspicious, calculating expression.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked her.

"Well it was great to see you all again," said James, who was now disentangled from Vivian but still holding her hand. "I would say I'd see you later today, but the Gryffindor Quidditch team has practise after dinner so we can win the Quidditch Cup again this year." He looked at Vivian again, and she smiled.

"Better practise hard, because your team didn't do so well against Slytherin…" I said with a grin.

"True, but neither of our Beaters fall off their brooms…"

"Shut up."

They laughed. "We'll see you around," said Remus, and he and Peter continued down the hall, followed by James and Vivian.

"Have a good Quidditch practise, James and Vivian!" called Mandy.

"Traitor," I said to Mandy under my breath.

"I'm just being friendly," she responded. "You know I don't _actually_ want Gryffindor to do well."

* * *

As part of his prefect duties Luke and the other Ravenclaw prefect had to patrol the corridors. Luke and I had been in the library together, and were standing in the hallway talking before he left for patrol. With less than a minute until curfew, Luke finally said, "I guess I have to go… You should probably head back to your common room so no one else catches you out after curfew."

"I'm going to be late, Luke," I said with a show of mock concern. "Does that mean you're going to take points from Slytherin?"

"Hmm… let me think about it."

I kissed him and we temporarily forgot about the curfew for several more minutes. Finally he pulled away and said, "No, I don't think I'm going to take points from Slytherin." He grinned. "But I have to go, I'll see you tomorrow!"

I giggled and went off down the hall towards the Slytherin common room. James and Sirius were walking towards me, headed the other direction.

"Oooo, Melanie has a _boyfriend_ ," said Sirius in an obnoxious voice as they passed by.

"Is that a problem?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Not at all," said Sirius, grinning. "I just didn't see you as someone who went for the boring prefect type with a weird nose, that's all."

"He is not boring, and he doesn't have a weird nose. How can you even say prefects are boring, when one of your best friends is a prefect?"

"I didn't say all prefects were boring."

"Ohh… I see." I rolled my eyes. "And what are you two doing out after curfew?"

"Putting Dungbombs outside the Slytherin common room," said James matter-of-factly. "You might not want to go down that hallway!" He and Sirius laughed.

"I have to, we're supposed to be back in our common rooms now!" I cried indignantly. This just made them laugh more.

"Run along before your prefect boyfriend finds out you've been breaking the rules!"

"Good night!" said James cheerfully.

"Ugh," I growled, and went on my way. They could be so irritating. But they did keep life interesting; I rather enjoyed the rivalry. Of course, I felt a bit less fond of them when I got to the hallway where the common room was, and nearly gagged because it smelled so foul. I didn't count, but there must have been sixty Dungbombs down there. I thought that was bad enough, but the moment I walked through the door to the common room, a bucket of water poured over my head. Those Gryffindors were impossible.


	14. Progression

Saturday brought our fifth Apparition lesson. By the end of the last week's class quite a few people had managed to Apparate successfully; I knew James and Sirius had both accomplished it, as had Luke, Mandy, and a handful of others. A couple of people had Splinched themselves – they had Apparated into their hoops but left a foot or an arm behind. Then there were people who hadn't gotten anywhere. That group included me, and I wouldn't have been so annoyed if many of the people I knew hadn't already managed it. At least Charlotte and I could still gripe about Apparition together and vilify Twycross for making Apparition sound so simple. Whenever I saw the Gryffindors, Peter and I usually ended up having similarly brutal conversations about "Twit-cross", as Peter was just as frustrated as I was.

So that first Saturday in March, I found myself back in the Great Hall, looking up at the grey clouds on the enchanted ceiling. I wished it were sunny – I thought maybe if it were sunny I'd be more likely to manage Apparition. It was as if the heavens were frowning upon me, saying "Sorry… not today!"

Twycross wheezed some more about Destination and Distraction and Distress (or maybe that was just how I felt), and then we were to try again. And so again, I heard a few loud cracks and found myself outside my hoop facing backwards, and I could see a few people had Apparated into their hoops. There was some cheering and high-fiving, and I grumpily turned around to face my hoop again.

Mandy, beside me, stepped out of her hoop in delight. "Don't worry, Mel, you'll get it… Eighty-third time's the charm, right?" I rolled my eyes. "No, really," she continued, "it looked like you almost had it."

"How do you _almost_ have it?" I asked crossly. "Did I half-disappear?"

"Twirl with more deliberation," she suggested. What did that even mean?

Maybe it wasn't working because I was so annoyed. I tried to clear my mind of all my frustration, but that made me more frustrated because I couldn't do it. I closed my eyes. I was determined to Apparate this time. I turned with deliberation, visualized the hoop in my mind – and suddenly felt like I was suffocating. Pressure pushed in on me from all directions as if I were in a tube – had I fainted? Had I actually died of frustration?

All of a sudden the feeling went away, and I was standing three feet away.

"What happened?" I asked. I looked around. "Did that work?"

"You did it!" cried Mandy. "Sort of. You're not in the hoop, but you moved, look!"

I was half impressed with myself, half confused, and felt sort of sick. Why did people even bother Apparating when it was so uncomfortable? Was I always going to feel like I was suffocating? Maybe I'd just use Floo Powder whenever I wanted to travel long distances – that was much easier. Sure, you got ashes all over yourself from traveling through the fireplace, and came out somewhat dizzy, but it was better than Apparition.

I wasn't able to Apparate again for the rest of the lesson, but I wasn't as bothered about it anymore; after all, I'd managed it once (sort of), and that was really enough for one day.

I left the Great Hall with Luke, who congratulated me on my almost-Apparition. "Even though you didn't go where you wanted, you still moved – that's the hardest part!"

"Thanks… Still, I prefer flying on a broomstick. I even prefer Floo Powder, and that's saying something."

"I hate Floo Powder," Luke laughed. "But I agree with you about flying. I'd choose a broomstick over Apparition any day… well, except a rainy day, maybe. Broomsticks and rain aren't a fun combination." His last comment hinted to me that Luke was still not over the fact that Ravenclaw's Quidditch team had lost to Hufflepuff by a mere ten points in last week's game, which had been during a rainstorm.

"Don't worry about that, I think your team can still—" I began, but stopped short when Peeves dropped a rubbish bin on us, and whooshed away blowing raspberries. This was something like the tenth time Peeves had disturbed us in the hallway. There was just nowhere you could hide from him.

"I'm pretty sure he's out to get us," said Luke, massaging his head where the rubbish bin had struck him.

"He's out to get _everyone_ ," I corrected. "At least he's not following us this time."

* * *

As Mandy and I no longer knew the Gryffindor common room password and the boys had not told us the new one, we did not see them as often as we had used to. It had always been us who went to go see the Gryffindors, never the other way around. The truth was, you'd be more likely to find them voluntarily jumping into the lake in winter than walking down to have a chat with Slytherins in our cold dungeon common room. But I couldn't blame them; I myself didn't really enjoy spending time in the common room.

I'd see them in the hallway every now and then, or in the classes we had together. On Thursday morning the following week, I saw Remus and Peter walking just a bit ahead of us on our way to Transfiguration. Since it was Remus's birthday, I ran to catch up with them.

"Hey!" I said. "Happy birthday, Remus!" I handed him a box of Chocolate Cauldrons. "Sorry it's not much, I should have got you more, since it's your seventeenth and all… I can't buy Firewhisky yet though, I'm still sixteen."

"Thank you! It's the thought that counts," said Remus, taking the Cauldrons. "And to be honest, I don't really want to have a huge birthday bash anyway… it's not really my sort of thing. James will make up for it when he has his birthday in a few weeks, I'm sure."

"You're still going to have a cake, aren't you?" asked Peter.

"Maybe."

"Where are your cohorts today?" I asked.

"Eh, somewhere…" said Remus evasively. "They said they were coming to class, but I think they found something and wanted to have some fun first. I don't know if—"

"Excuse us! Watch out!" came a voice from behind us. We turned around; James was soaring through the air, standing on two brooms: one under each foot. Sirius had somehow gotten hold of a pair of Muggle roller skates, and was racing James through the hallway. People jumped out of the way in front of them to avoid being hit in the head by James or knocked down by Sirius, who it seemed hadn't quite figured out how to skate. James leapt off the brooms as he reached the classroom, but Sirius was unable to brake and crashed into a nearby suit of armour.

"Smooth, Padfoot," James laughed as Sirius tried to stand up again in the roller skates. "I win." He paused to look at the brooms critically. "This is actually quite effective – I think I'm going to invent a double broom."

"You and your inventions," Sirius laughed.

Professor McGonagall poked her head out of the doorway, evidently trying to find the source of the clattering noises. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted James with two broomsticks and Sirius pulling the suit of armor back up off the floor. Sirius noticed McGonagall and said, "There was a strong wind in the hallway, Professor, that's why this fell down." McGonagall was unconvinced, possibly due to the fact that Sirius was still wearing his roller skates, and both of them got detention for the following night.

"I'm just glad she didn't give us the detention tonight," Sirius told Remus as everyone filed into the classroom. "We have to be there for your birthday party."

"I appreciate it, but I told you I don't need a big party with a hundred people in the common room. We can just have some cake up in the dormitory or something."

"Chocolate cake," suggested Peter.

"Don't you want firewhisky?" asked Sirius.

"Okay Moony, we don't have to if you don't want to, it's your day," said James. "I know I will for my birthday, which is in less than three weeks!"

"Or vanilla, with chocolate icing…" Peter continued.

* * *

I had planned to meet Luke for dinner at the Ravenclaw table. Normally on these occasions, although they were never actually a big deal, I would tend to dress more carefully than usual. This time, however, I was more worried about my Defence Against the Dark Arts essay than about how I looked. As I walked by the mirror in our dormitory without glancing at my reflection, Charlotte walked in, and raised an eyebrow critically. "Please don't tell me you're planning to set foot outside this room wearing that, it's hideous." I examined my jumper in the mirror. It wasn't that bad…

"You look like my gran," Charlotte continued as she collected some books from her trunk. "Go with the yellow one. Don't look at me like that, I'm sure you'd rather it was me telling you this than Luke… Just trying to help." She grinned and walked out the door.

I was sure Luke would _never_ tell me I looked like his grandmother, but I switched to the yellow jumper anyway. When I walked up to dinner, I met Luke in the Great Hall and we walked over to the Ravenclaw table. We discussed random things, but it seemed both of us had our minds on something else. Neither of us really cared that the discussion was going nowhere. Luke wondered if there was another Hogsmeade weekend coming up. I rambled about my chance encounter with a house-elf outside the kitchens at the beginning of the week.

"Sorry I'm acting so… vacant," he said. "I've just got so much going on this week. I actually had to cancel our Quidditch practice yesterday. Cecil Braddock yelled at me for about an hour because of it. Of course, he's a fourth year, so he has loads of time. But I'm the Captain."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," I said. "Sort of. I'm with you in the feeling of too much work, but I haven't got Quidditch going on too…"

Around us at the table were a few of Luke's friends. They were a great group – the Ravenclaws were fun and intelligent people, which generally meant lots of really interesting discussions and thoughtful debates at the table. But today, with a few of them absent and a few others exhausted from writing a long Arithmancy paper, it was relatively quiet. Luckily, Priya Kaur, my friend from Astronomy, was seated across from me at the table, and during the many lulls in my uninspired conversation with Luke, she chipped in to supply us with a selection of random trivia. She was very talkative, which usually got the two of us into trouble during Astronomy classes, but today that was helpful. At least it gave Luke and me something to talk about.

After dinner I walked into the common room and found Mandy and Charlotte sitting in the most comfortable chairs by the fire, surrounded by textbooks and a few crumpled pieces of parchment. "How was dinner?" asked Charlotte.

"Eh, it was fine, I guess," I said. It had been rather boring, but not every day could be an exciting day.

"What are you doing now?" asked Mandy. "Did you want to visit Gryffindor tower?"

"I'm probably going to just do homework. I think Remus just wanted a quiet sort of celebration with the other Gryffindors, so we can visit tomorrow." It was a rather funny thought; I would never ordinarily use the word 'quiet' in the same sentence as discussing those four. For some reason I had envisioned that mostly all they did involved wild mayhem, but this could hardly be the case. They had real lives too, they couldn't always be entertainers.

"All right. Well, we've saved a seat for you," said Mandy, lifting _The Standard Book of Spells: Grade Six_ off a chair.

"Thanks," I said. "I'm just going to go get my books and stuff."

When I had collected everything I needed to write my essay from the dormitory, I went back to join Mandy and Charlotte at the table by the fire, and began writing my Defence Against the Dark Arts essay about how to deal with dementors. Not that it really mattered what I wrote, because Professor Alvers gave practically everyone Outstanding's – seeing as he knew nothing himself, any information we wrote about in our homework was a bit of a novelty to him.

"It's a bit hard to write about it if we can't even do the Patronus Charm yet," said Mandy after a while, looking at her nearly complete roll of parchment.

"Looks like you did fine, though," I said. "Your essay is five times as long as mine and I'm starting to run out of things to say."

I glanced over at Charlotte, who had not even started her essay and was poking her wand at her parchment to fold it into various shapes.

I laughed and turned back to my essay, but luckily was saved from having to think about it any more when Alanna ran down the stairs, several pieces of parchment and a quill in one hand, a thick book in the other, and ink smudges on her face. "Have you finished the Defence paper?" she asked breathlessly. "I just realized it's due tomorrow and I haven't _started_ and we have _so_ much other work to do!" She tossed her parchment scrolls and heavy book on our table, making the table shake, and turned to a second year girl nearby who had managed to get one of the comfortable chairs. "Excuse me, I need to sit there. I'm a sixth year and a prefect and I'm about to die." The girl scowled and left with her book.

I laughed. "That's really not helping the second-years' image of us… remember how terrified we were of sixth-years when we were twelve?"

"It had to be done," insisted Alanna, dragging the now-vacated chair over next to Mandy's. "She'll understand when she's our age, and then she'll probably do the same thing. Right now she doesn't have half as much work as we do, and since we'll probably be sitting here until three in the morning, I need to be comfortable."

"I don't know about you, but I'm not staying here until then," I said. "If I have to go to sleep before I finish, so be it."

"So has anyone started the Transfiguration paper?" she asked us. "I was working on it but that one's not due until next week."

"I don't think so," said Mandy, turning a page of her book. "We're working on the dementor essay for Alvers now. Well, Melanie and I are. I'm not sure what Charlotte is doing."

Charlotte raised an eyebrow. "I'll have you know I am very busy over here." She gave her folded parchment one last prod, and it soared into the air, in the shape of a magnificent phoenix. It flew around the room and then caught fire.

"Very realistic," I said, grinning.

Charlotte scowled at the few ashes floating down. "Damn it, now I need to start over."

"You had written almost nothing, so don't be too upset," I reasoned. "I don't really want to work on mine either, do you want to see if we can make a Patronus instead?"

While Mandy helped Alanna with her essay, Charlotte and I set to work practicing the Patronus Charm, a ridiculously complicated charm that supposedly would drive off a dementor, if done properly. So far, all I had managed in class was an indistinct, possibly four-legged shape that disappeared after a few seconds. Charlotte's was just a wisp of smoke.

"Okay," said Charlotte, holding notes about the Patronus Charm in one hand, and her wand in the other. "You need to think of a happy memory, and say _Expecto Patronum_."

"I know that. But if it's that easy, we should have been able to do it during class. Is it just any happy memory?"

"No idea. I would guess it needs to be a really happy one, because it has to be the opposite of a dementor, which likes fear and despair and stuff."

"All right, I'm going to try… _Expecto Patronum!_ " I said, thinking of my first date with Luke. Nothing happened. I scowled at my wand, as if it was its fault.

"Are you implying _I'm_ a dementor?" asked Charlotte. "Point your wand at someone else."

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was pointing it."

"Maybe that's the problem – you have to be focused."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine then, since you're so smart, you show me."

She held up her hands. "I'm just reading the notes. You know I can't even come close to making a Patronus."

We kept practising, and despite the frustration, I could tell we were getting better. The indistinct silvery shapes we produced had more of a form, and lingered for a bit longer than they had used to.

I thought of the first Easter holiday I had spent at Mandy's house with her family, in second year, and cried, " _Expecto Patronum!_ " I watched in awe as a silvery-white horse shot out of the end of my wand, galloped around the room, and then faded away. "Did you see that?" I asked Charlotte as it disappeared. "I did it! That was a Patronus!"

"Well what do you want, a trophy?" asked Charlotte. "I mean, it's great, but let's see you do that when there's a real dementor standing in front of you."

"Thanks," I said dryly, "I'm lucky to have supportive friends like you."

She laughed. "If you want, I can pretend to be a dementor so it'll be just like the real thing."

"Actually, you'd be scarier."

"Thanks, I'm lucky to have friends like you," she said, mimicking me. " _Expecto Patronum!_ " Something silver soared out of her wand, and it was not as shapeless as before, but before we could have a good look at it, it disappeared.

"This is just like Apparition," she said critically, staring at where her Patronus had vanished. "Why am I bothering?"

"No it's not, this is more fun, and it doesn't end in feeling like you're suffocating. You're so close, Charlotte, really! Try just once more!"

She tried again twice and it finally worked: A fox leapt around above our heads. Charlotte's face lit up with a wide grin, something that was kind of rare for her – she usually did not show such excitement about anything except gossip. She was able to keep her Patronus from disappearing, so I cast my horse Patronus at it, and they chased each other over the table where Mandy and Alanna were working.

"Will you cut that out?" Alanna laughed, waving the animals away from her essay.

As Charlotte and I looked down from the Patronuses, they disappeared. I sat down at the table with Mandy and Alanna. "How are the essays going?"

"I finished my dementor essay," said Mandy. "You two should be able to finish yours in about five minutes, since you can write all about the Patronus now. I saw those, they were fantastic!"

"Thanks," I said, ecstatic, and dragged out my parchment again to keep writing about the Patronus, while Charlotte dragged her chair back to the table. When she disappeared behind a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ newspaper, I stopped writing, unnerved by the relevance of the newspaper's front page headline, and craned my neck to try and read the article. Dementors, which were supposed to guard the high-security wizard prison of Azkaban, had gotten loose and were wreaking havoc in Liverpool. Dementors less than twenty miles from my home. Suddenly the idea of producing a misty, beautiful Patronus was a lot less of a fun assignment and more a necessary means to survival.

"Did you read the front cover, Char?" I asked.

She nodded. "They'll be knocking at your door soon, won't they?" she asked, and an involuntary shiver escaped me. Charlotte saw this, and added, "Fortunately you can kick their arses with that Patronus."

"I hope so," I said, wondering whether I'd be able to conjure a Patronus under stress.

Mandy asked conversationally, "Are you going to take those extra classes in Hogsmeade for the Apparition exam?"

"I think I will," said Charlotte. "Merlin knows I'm awful at Apparition so far. I haven't even managed it once."

"I'm not going to be seventeen by the test date at the beginning of May," I said glumly. "It's a week before my birthday, so I'll have to wait until the next test."

"I might," said Alanna. "Only if that Ravenclaw Mudblood doesn't go. She was the first person to Apparate during the regular lessons, I couldn't believe it! And she just went on and on about it for an hour. She was stressing me out."

"Everything stresses you out," I muttered.

Alanna laughed. "I know," she said. "Speaking of which, all of this is distracting me from my essay." She flailed her hands for emphasis. "So let's stop talking now."

* * *

Taking advantage of an unusually warm, sunny spring day that week, I sat on the steps in the courtyard with the Gryffindors and Charlotte. The news article about the Dementors from a few days ago was still on my mind; I'd written to my parents and heard back from them that they were all right, which was a relief. But Remus noticed I seemed out of sorts, and as I stared at the flagstones in front of me I didn't even notice as Remus moved up one step to sit next to me until he was right there.

"You all right?"

"I'm… er, yeah." I hesitated to announce my fears to the courageous Gryffindors, as it might lower their opinion of me, but I just couldn't keep it inside. This was the point when I would learn a lot about our friendship. "I just think this business with You-Know-Who, this war, is getting so bad, and it scares me. I don't see any end in sight, at least not soon."

Remus put a comforting arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into the hug. Peter looked over at us. "It scares me too," he admitted.

"I think everyone is scared," said James, seated in front of me on the step just below mine. "We're teenagers, and facing the idea of fighting a war when we leave school."

"You going to fight in it?" Sirius asked him.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about it," said James. "I want to do what I can. Our side needs all the help we can get to stop Voldemort."

Sirius grinned. "I will, for sure. It'll be nice to use everything we've learned here in a real way, actually doing something."

I stared at them. "But you could be killed! It's not just a fun way to test your skills, Sirius, it's war and it's dangerous. People die out there."

"Someone has to take that risk," Sirius insisted, "or Voldemort will be around forever."

"What are you going to do, Mel?" Remus asked.

"I don't know, but I'm not fighting," I said. "I'm not on any side. I think you lot are brave to do it, but I don't want any part in that violence; I don't want to kill anyone or be killed." I met Charlotte's eyes over Peter's head; she and I were on the same page, wanted no part in the war. And the two of us probably knew people on the other side, though I didn't say that out loud. I didn't know what to do, having the future so empty and uninviting.

Remus's arm tightened around me, and James nodded. None of them tried to persuade me to do anything or feel a certain way. They had different perspectives on the war than my Slytherin friends and I did, and that was that; both sides were valid. I was lucky to have such good friends.

But a thought came to me as I sat there in the protection of Remus's arm: if I now considered Voldemort's side 'the other side', did that mean I actually _had_ chosen a side now? Had I subjected myself to the fate of caring about the war, given up my independence in it all?

"Have you heard the new Hobgoblins song?" Peter asked, to relieved laughter. "It's called 'Voldesnort'. It's brilliant."

* * *

The next couple of weeks were nothing out of the ordinary, except the practice sessions for Apparition started for the people who would be taking their tests in early May, which included Mandy and Charlotte. Other than that, life went on as normal; it rained a lot as spring came around the corner, we went to classes, and the escaped dementors were apprehended by the Ministry after ripping up loads of trees.

The last Saturday in March, James came up to talk to Mandy, Charlotte and me as we were leaving breakfast. "I don't know if you know, but tomorrow is my birthday!" he exclaimed. How would we _not_ know? He'd been talking about it for over a month. He continued, "There's going to be some festivities in the Gryffindor common room tomorrow night, and you're invited. Consider yourselves very lucky and special, because I've never invited Slytherins. There will be Firewhisky. See you there!" He bounded off down the hall.

So on Sunday night we all went over to the Gryffindor common room with high hopes. They always knew how to throw a party; I'd heard stories of post-Quidditch-match victory celebrations. And we were not disappointed: There were streamers and balloons all over their common room, and on the tables were heaps of food from Honeydukes. They had indeed even managed to get Firewhisky, as promised; how they had gotten all these things without a Hogsmeade trip was beyond me.

James was by the window surrounded by a small crowd including Peter; as quite the entertainer, James was thoroughly enjoying himself. I decided to wait until a bit later in the evening to wish him a happy birthday, because he seemed too occupied at the moment, so I found Remus and Sirius and talked to them instead. I asked how they'd managed to get so much stuff from Hogsmeade, but they refused to tell. After a short while, Lily Evans came up to join us.

Perhaps now that James was dating Vivian, and Lily had been with Lewis Ackerley since the Yule Ball, she wasn't as worried about being propositioned by James. "Potter sure does know how to throw a party, I'll give him that," she said, looking around appreciatively at the decorations.

"Do mine eyes deceive me?" cried Sirius. "Lily Evans! You're actually here!" He threw his arms around her, and she laughed.

"Of course I'm here," she said, shoving Sirius off good-naturedly. "I told you I would be."

"I'm glad you came," said Remus.

Sirius disappeared off into the crowd, but Remus, Lily and I caught up for a bit until we all split off and mingled among the crowd; I found Sirius sitting with his legs up on a table, his chair leaning back at a precarious angle. He had something in his hand and was prodding it with his wand, making it click.

"What's that?"

He grinned. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Not really, no," I said.

"Then you'll find out later."

"Ugh," I groaned. "Shouldn't you be up there in the centre of attention with James, making a fool of yourself like always?"

He ignored my question and put the object into his pocket. "We haven't seen you for a while! Has Mr. Prefect replaced us?" He put his hands behind his head and leaned his chair back even more. If he fell all the way backward, I would do nothing but laugh at him.

I rolled my eyes. "It's not my fault you haven't seen me, you've been too occupied planning out whatever secret it is you won't tell me about. And you keep going on about me dating a prefect, but one of your best friends is a prefect too, you know."

"No need to get worked up over it."

"I'm not worked up, I just think you're being hypocritical."

Sirius put on a look of mock hurt. "You wound me, Hastings. Your words are a stab to my heart."

"Well, not everyone can like you as much as you like yourself." I smirked.

He scowled, but this time it wasn't in jest, as he let his chair legs fall back to the floor and turned away from me to sulk. "Sorry," I said quickly. "That was rude. Even if it's a little true. I didn't mean to imply that I don't like you – you're a great friend, actually, even if you're a twit, and–"

I was cut off when Sirius interrupted me with laughter. "You're certainly something, Hastings," he said, throwing a friendly arm around me, and then removing it again almost instantly. "Well, it's time to sing." He stood up and announced, "Everyone! It's time to sing 'Happy Birthday' to James!" The room was soon filled with the sounds of many people singing slightly off-key, and Sirius reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out what appeared to be one of Zonko's new Indoor Fireworks, and waved it at me briefly.

When people finished singing, Sirius threw the firework into the air and it let out a bang and various fantastic shimmering colours of light. Remus and Peter joined in with a multitude more fireworks, and soon, stars and spirals of various colours danced around the room. James was standing with Lily by the window, and they were both laughing, enjoying themselves, until Vivian entered the room and James left Lily at the window while the fireworks sparkled around them. Sirius caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up from across the room.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks so much for reading! If you've gotten this far, why not leave a review? It would totally make my day. (Imagine how Ron would feel if the Chudley Cannons actually won a Quidditch game. That's how I feel when I get reviews!) :D**


	15. New Faces and New Places

At breakfast one day at the end of March I received a letter from Nathan, asking how I was doing and whether I'd be coming home for Easter, since I had stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas. It was nice to see that his owl had finally stopped getting lost. But again this letter, like most I had gotten since the one in October, gave no more indication of Nathan's and my parents' loyalties.

I had already made plans with Mandy to stay with her for Easter, although I had not discussed it yet with my family. I figured it would be fine; I had visited Mandy for half of two previous Easter holidays. Mandy's parents loved having me over and almost treated me like a second daughter. And they were so interesting – especially her father, who was a Muggle and loved everything to do with magic.

After class that morning I wrote back to Nathan.

 _Dear Nathan,  
Thanks for your letter, it's great to hear from you again! I was actually planning to stay with my friend Mandy for the first half of the holiday, but I'll be home for the second week! And we can play Quidditch with the neighbours and I can amaze you with how much better I've gotten. Hope work is treating you well, can't wait to see you!  
Love,  
Melanie_

As I put down my quill, I decided it would probably be a good idea to ask my parents if I could actually stay at Mandy's for the first half of the Easter holiday. I wrote them a quick letter, tied it together with Nathan's, and set off for the Owlery which was at the top of the West Tower.

The Owlery was a drafty, circular stone room whose floor was covered in straw, occasional owl pellets and feathers. After I opened the door, I whistled for Mercury, my tawny owl, and he fluttered down from one of the highest rafters. I tied the thick scroll on to his leg, and he took off out the large open window. When he left I stayed for a few more minutes staring out the window watching him go.

Life was relatively normal the rest of the day, but the next day brought absurdity at its best. It was April Fool's Day, and everyone had to watch out in the halls because tricks abounded, but I was unfortunately unaware of the date as I walked up to the Great Hall that morning for breakfast. I met up with Remus, who informed me that Potions was meeting outside today to collect ingredients for our potion. Lily backed him up on it – and she wasn't the type to play practical jokes, but I wasn't even thinking of that as I didn't remember what day it was. When I walked outside, my shoes were turned to stone by a fifth-year Gryffindor I didn't know, who then hurried inside laughing.

I groaned as I finally realised what day it was, and it dawned on me that under no circumstances would it make sense for Potions to be outside. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to fix my shoes, and I couldn't walk in them, so I got my feet out and left my shoes there as little stone statues outside. The ground was muddy so I took off my socks too before going back inside. As I approached the Potions dungeon, I saw Sirius, James, Peter, and Remus hurrying into the classroom, evidently having just created a disaster somewhere else. "All right Hastings?" asked Sirius, grinning as he saw me running down the hall barefoot and carrying my socks.

It was better than being late for Transfiguration, I supposed, but I still lost Slytherin a few points for coming to class late and without shoes. I rushed over to my table and rummaged around in my bag for _Advanced Potion-Making_ while Slughorn talked about the potion we were to be making today. When I had finally got the book out and turned it to the right page, everyone was up again collecting ingredients from the cabinet. I walked over and got in line behind Remus, who asked me, "Why were you late? Something hold you up?" He grinned, and I punched his arm.

"I can't believe I fell for that. I couldn't remember what day it was!" I griped.

"How did you lose your shoes?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I laughed.

After class I went back outside to try and fix my shoes again, was unsuccessful, and shortly after I came back inside, I ran into Professor McGonagall, who took away more points from Slytherin for my running around barefoot and tracking muddy footprints all over the entrance hall. The only bright side to this was that since she was the Transfiguration professor, she was able to fix my shoes – although rather begrudgingly, and after warning me to be more careful with them.

* * *

I walked into the bathroom and was about to go into a stall when a cheery voice stopped me. "Hastings!"

So I turned around, and in front of the mirror was Vanessa Saltz, a Ravenclaw girl with perfectly straight long blonde hair and what would have been a beautiful face if she didn't have such an obviously fake smile plastered on it when she turned away from the mirror to face me. "Looking forward to the Easter holidays?"

I had no idea where this was leading – I had never spoken to her, and here she was making very contrived small talk. I figured I was in for something unpleasant though; Charlotte had mentioned her a few times as someone she strongly disliked. "Er… I suppose so…" I said. "Are you?"

"Aren't you going to miss your boyfriend? How long have you been dating?" she asked, turning back to face the mirror and continue applying her make-up, and occasionally looking up at my reflection in the mirror.

"Just under two months. Do you know him?"

"I saw your game against Ravenclaw in the beginning of the year," she interrupted. "And the way you fell off your broom… Is that why you're dating Luke, to try and steal some Quidditch tactics from him? It's okay, you can tell me."

"No, it's because we like each other," I said, nonplussed. "I'm not even _on_ the Quidditch team."

"You mean _you_ like _him_. I don't think he's ever mentioned you… I don't mean to be _rude_ , but I don't think he's really into you."

"Well I know him better than you do, so forgive me for not being shocked that he doesn't talk with you about his relationships."

Vanessa gave me a patronising glance in the mirror. "All right, if you say so. But I'm a Ravenclaw just like him, so I actually spend more time with him than you do… Even so, just look at it objectively. One day he'll wake up and wonder what he's been doing messing about with a Slytherin, when there are so many beautiful girls in Ravenclaw!" She flicked her hair behind her shoulder, and I just stared at her, open-mouthed. Real people behaved this way?

I abruptly turned around to leave and find a different bathroom so I wouldn't have to keep talking to her, but unfortunately she had just finished fixing her make-up and followed me out. Luckily, I saw Charlotte and Hector nearby walking down the hall towards us. I looked back at Vanessa. "Er… okay. Why are you saying this rubbish to me again? I don't think I've ever even spoken to you. Are you normally this mean, or is this an April Fool's joke?"

"What nasty rumours are you starting this time?" asked Charlotte, having just met up with us and glaring at Vanessa.

Vanessa's smile tightened. "You know, I'm not completely deaf to what's happening out there," she said sharply, all false charm gone from her tone. "Everything with You-Know-Who and all these Dark wizards – I hear they were all Slytherins when they were here at Hogwarts. And aren't you Slytherins all into that stuff? I don't need to make things up, your house doesn't exactly have a golden reputation, does it?"

I could only stare, speechless. And while I wasn't unaware of the reputation of Slytherin House among the others, it still hurt to hear it said so bluntly, and I took the offence personally.

"Who the hell does she think she is?" Hector asked loudly, still well within earshot of Vanessa. "What a troll."

Charlotte responded, "She is one of the rudest people I have ever had the misfortune to know. Her life's purpose is to make other people's lives hell and to spread hurtful lies about everyone. She's quite a gossip, but rather than just passing interesting true things around, as I do, she makes things up. The problem is that people believe her sometimes. I got into a fight with her in third year, I don't know if you remember; I had just left Divination and she was telling false stories about me so I gave her a little taste of her own medicine and told everyone that her life goal is to be a little lying, conniving strumpet just like her mother."

Hector and I burst out laughing. "From what I can tell, she's doing a great job of it so far," said Hector. "So what was she trying to attack you for, Melanie?"

"I have no idea," I said. "She was attempting to convince me that Luke isn't actually interested in me. Maybe she likes him and she's jealous or something… I don't know. It was a very weird interaction."

Charlotte shook her head. "From what I can tell she's nice if you get on her good side or treat her like she's a queen. Unfortunately, being Slytherins, we are already on her bad side. Sorry Mel – I don't think you've seen the last of her, she'll probably be after you now. I reckon she didn't like you much."

* * *

On Sunday almost everyone I knew was in Hogsmeade taking practice sessions for the upcoming Apparition Test, which would be after the Easter holidays. I walked to the library alone with my half-completed diagrams of the odd-looking rare _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ and Screechsnap bushes for Herbology.

I walked up to a bookshelf and withdrew several books with useful diagrams and explanations. While looking around for a table, I noticed Vanessa Saltz and a few of her friends, but before she could see me, I slunk off away from her until I nearly bumped into another table. Sitting alone at the table was the curly-haired blonde Hufflepuff on whom Mulciber had tried the Imperius Curse about a month ago; she looked down at her textbook as soon as I met her eyes.

When I remained standing by her table, the girl turned in her chair so she was no longer facing me, pulling her copy of _Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes_ up in front of her face, as if she were afraid of me.

"Just so you know," I said, "I didn't use the Imperius Curse on you. That was Calvin Mulciber, and I was only there because I tried to get him to stop."

"Oh." She finally set down her book and looked at me. "Okay. I believe you."

"What?" I was startled. "Really?"

"Of course, why should I not?" she asked quietly. "You weren't lying, were you?"

"No… I just thought you would need a lot more convincing. I am a Slytherin after all. I didn't think you'd trust me."

"I know not all Slytherins are the same. And you're talking to me nicely and not calling me 'Mudblood', so you seem all right to me." I was thankful for her to be so accepting and trusting of me even though there was no logical reason for her to believe me. "Aren't you a sixth year?" she asked. "Why aren't you in Hogsmeade taking Apparition lessons?"

"I can't take the test, it's before I turn seventeen. So I'm here, drawing and discussing a _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ for Herbology while everyone else Apparates all over Hogsmeade… Do you mind if I sit down?"

"Not at all," she said, and slid aside some large tomes to make a space for me. We introduced ourselves as I got out my parchment, quill and ink – her name was Althea Seward, and she was Muggle-born. Her parents had considered not sending her to Hogwarts when she had gotten her letter because they were so uncomfortable and shocked by the fact that magic existed, but had eventually relented and were now proud of having a witch for a daughter. "And they considered not sending me back again when I told them about You-Know-Who. They were concerned I wouldn't be safe at school. But I said Hogwarts is very safe."

"Wow," I said. "I can't imagine what it was like finding out about the wizarding world from a letter!" I'd heard a similar story from Lily Evans on the Hogwarts Express first year, but she'd had a very different reaction from her parents; they had been thrilled rather than cautious. But either way, I'd grown up in the wizarding world, wanting to go to Hogwarts. It was just unreal to me, the idea of knowing nothing about it until the letter. "I wonder if there are any people whose parents actually don't let them go at all… You'd find out the wizarding world exists but then never get to learn about it!"

"Yeah. I'm glad that didn't happen to me." She looked at the book in front of her as if just realising it was there. "Oh, I'm sorry… this has been fun, but I need to get back to work!"

"That's all right," I said, and began to label my Screechsnap diagram.

"Do you think I'd be allowed to practice in the library? Just quiet things like the Colour-Changing Charm… do you think it'd be all right?"

"I'm sure it's fine," I said. I looked up facts about Screechsnap and Althea practised the Colour-Changing Charm on a book, but wasn't getting very far – it only changed to a lighter shade of its original brown. I suggested starting with smaller things like quills, which worked well for her, until she'd mastered that and moved onto the book again.

"This is so _rebellious_ ," she whispered to me at one point, her eyes lit up with excitement. "This is a library book!"

At this point, Madame Pince, the librarian, saw the now yellow book and ordered us out of the library, saying she'd had enough of me ruining books. I had never ruined a book, but I supposed she remembered the time Hector had ripped a page out of a Divination book.

We started to walk away, but after Madame Pince had gone, Althea and I simply went to a different table. She immediately spread her books and parchment over the table again; I, being far less motivated than she was, decided I was actually done for the day. I bid Althea good-bye, wishing her good luck studying for her O.W.L.s, and went to check out _Native Assyrian Plants_ and _Vociferous Vegetation_.

As I collected my books after checking them out, I heard Remus's voice calling my name. I turned around, and the four Gryffindor boys were walking towards me. "Hey," said Remus. "What are you up to? We just got back from the Apparition session."

I looked at my textbooks – all I'd actually done that day was draw and label a Screechsnap plant. "Herbology," I said. I turned to Sirius and James. "What are _you_ doing in the library? I thought you avoided this place like spattergroit."

"Got lost," said Sirius, grinning.

Remus laughed. "I wanted to check out a few books, and we had all come in from Hogsmeade together; the library was on the way back so they came along."

"How was Apparition today?"

"You didn't miss much," said James. "Splinching, falling over, the usual." He had a very satisfied expression on his face, and didn't seem like he was paying much attention to what he was saying.

"It must have really been some Apparition lesson – you're grinning like an idiot," I said.

"What?" said James.

"I don't think I'm any more prepared for the Apparition Test than I was before," said Peter.

"That's all right, at least you _can_ take the test in May," I said.

Remus laughed, and then accurately sensing my feelings on the issue, said, "Think of it this way – you have extra time before you take it, so you will pass with flying colours whereas the rest of us who are taking it early have every possibility of failing it because we're not prepared."

"Thanks," I laughed, rolling my eyes. "You always know the right thing to say… even though there isn't a speck of truth in what you just said. Of course you'll pass."

We started walking out of the library together. It had been a long time since I'd played tricks on the Gryffindors, so as we turned to go our separate ways I nonverbally cast an invisible wall directly in front of them, and continued walking. I was very satisfied with myself, because I usually couldn't do nonverbal magic. I heard a thud, and some swearing, and Sirius's voice saying "Hastings!"

I turned around, trying to look innocent and puzzled, and not too impressed with myself. "What happened?" I asked in a voice that sounded too surprised. "Did you all lose your balance?"

"Yeah, funny, isn't it? All of us at the same time, and you were right behind us," said James as he stood up. "What a strange coincidence."

"That was a pretty cool bit of magic, though," said Remus, reaching out at where the invisible wall had been.

"You're supposed to be on our side!" Sirius told him, and before I could get away he had cast a Slipping Jinx on me. I fell over and slid a few feet.

"Well that was uncalled for," I said as I got up, trying not to laugh. "All that just because I was innocently standing nearby when you clumsily ran into a wall." I picked up my bag from where it had fallen on the floor.

"What's going on here?" asked Professor McGonagall's voice. "Not fighting in the corridors, I hope?"

"Not at all, of course not," I said, wondering how much she had seen before she arrived.

"Good," said McGonagall, although she looked suspicious and waited for us all to leave before she continued walking.

Peter agreed. "We were just saying goodbye." He threw an arm around me for good measure, and I threw one around Remus in turn until it turned into a big, silly group hug, with Sirius laughing in my ear and someone's foot stepping on mine. Professor McGonagall shook her head and briskly strolled away, but I thought I saw the hint of a smile as she went.

I ran into my fellow Slytherins on my way back to the common room, and as they were going to dinner I joined them, still carrying my bag.

"News from today!" said Charlotte. "The most exciting thing you missed was Marlene McKinnon Apparating clear across town, but she left one ear behind. And Lily Evans and Lewis Ackerley broke up just after the lesson." This last bit of information certainly explained why James had been so pleased when I'd run into him in the library – he'd never been particularly fond of Lewis.

Mandy turned to me. "Whatever did you do without us? Did you miss us? Merlin forbid, you did your homework," she said, eyeing my bag.

"No, I didn't miss you at all. I replaced you with a new friend."

"Vanessa Saltz?" asked Charlotte.

"No, although I did run into her again. What did I do to deserve that?"

"Yeah I noticed she wasn't in Hogsmeade," said Charlotte. "My first thought was that she was too stupid to Apparate, or had filled her brain with so much rubbish about people that she couldn't remember the practice session dates… but I suppose it could have been because she's too young…"

* * *

I got a letter back from Nathan the next day at breakfast.

 _Hey Melanie,  
Mum and Dad are okay with you staying at your friend's place for the first week. Remember before you get all high and mighty about your Quidditch skills, I taught you how to play Quidditch when you were about 4, so you could say it's all really because of me. See you soon!  
Nathan_

I laughed at his letter. I missed him, and found myself really happy to be going home for that second week – I hadn't seen my family since the summer, what with spending Christmas at Hogwarts.

As such, because I was looking forward to the end of the week, that week seemed to drag on endlessly. As it neared the Saturday we'd be allowed to leave, Mandy was increasingly less inclined to do any work, being already in the mindset of the holidays. I, on the other hand, was more motivated than ever because I didn't want to have any work to do over break.

I usually worked on assignments with Mandy, so as a compromise we alternated between frenzied study sessions in the library, and lolling out in the grass outside where it was finally getting sunny and warm. A few days that week I saw the Slytherin Quidditch team practicing, and that was usually the cue for us to go inside again and not think about how much fun they were having.

On Saturday evening, Mandy and I met her mother at King's Cross in London. Mrs Macintosh looked just like Mandy, but a little taller and her hair was a darker shade of blonde. She hugged Mandy tightly, and then me, and then we set out for the house.

We got into the car – a Muggle car, but it had been expanded by magic so it was very comfortable. Mrs Macintosh started it by magic and left it to its own devices while we drove home, asking us about our term at school. The journey passed pleasantly, and eventually we reached the long gravel driveway to the house, which was a perfect white house with a gabled roof, a large front porch surrounded by a garden, and expansive lawn, shaded by a bushy oak tree. As the car pulled in, her golden retriever Chester ran up to greet us. Mandy opened the car door and Chester jumped in as we giggled and petted him. He was a very adorable, but stupid dog.

We took our trunks in and carried them upstairs. After I dropped off my things in the guest room, I went over to Mandy's room. It was much the same as the last time I had seen it – decorated with both Muggle and wizard decorations. An old, cracked Sneakoscope sat atop an otherwise very neat bookshelf. On the wall was a large Chudley Cannons poster (the worst Quidditch team of all time, but Mandy wouldn't hear a word against them), and a Muggle poster in psychedelic colours that read "Yes" at the top and pictured five Muggles with guitars and keyboards; as in all Muggle photos, the people were not moving, and I still had never really got used to things like that.

Mandy was my primary source for Muggle pop culture. Aside from my old friend Archie Summerby who had taught me Muggle folk music on guitar as we'd sat by the Hufflepuff common room, most of my Muggle music knowledge came from what Mandy introduced me to. Mandy and I had even tried to sneak out of Hogwarts one day at the beginning of fourth year to attend a Grateful Dead concert in London, but unfortunately, Slughorn didn't believe that Mandy and I both had "family emergencies" that required us to be away from Hogwarts for the night. In retrospect, we should have said one of us was just going as moral support to the other's family emergency.

She had also introduced me to the cinema, which was like watching a large photograph for a couple of hours but more interesting and it told a story. Muggles could really think of some ingenious things! The best part about going to the cinema was pretending to be Muggles for a few hours: using Muggle money, and talking about Muggle things like electricity, football, and platform shoes. And Mandy had convinced me to read some Muggle literature, which I enjoyed. Mr Macintosh was always amused when we got overly excited about things like these, and loved our enthusiasm for them – but it went both ways, because I thought his constant amazement at magic was pretty entertaining.

I had always wondered if Mr Macintosh were jealous of Mandy and Mrs Macintosh's ability to do magic, but it never seemed that he was; he was supportive of it and loved to learn about it. Tom Macintosh was really a lot like a big kid.

When we came back downstairs, Mrs Macintosh had started baking bread, and Mandy and I went to help in the kitchen. Mandy remembered that she could use magic at home now that she was seventeen, and was thrilled. It went a lot quicker that way, but she had to keep waiting for me to mix things by hand since I couldn't do magic away from Hogwarts yet, as my birthday was not for another week and a half.

We remained in the kitchen talking with Mrs Macintosh while the bread baked, and a while later after we had taken it out, Mr Macintosh got home from work. He worked for the Muggle newspaper and Mrs Macintosh worked for the _Daily Prophet_ , which I thought was cute. When he came in he hugged Mandy and me in greeting and then asked us about how our year was going at Hogwarts. He was delighted when Mandy informed him that she was allowed to do magic at home now.

Mandy pointed her wand at a large knife and then at the bread cooling on the counter, and the knife started slicing the bread – rather sloppily, cutting some thick slices and some so thin that they crumbled apart, until Mrs Macintosh took over the slicing and cut it into perfect, even slices. Mandy then said " _Evanesco_ ," and Vanished a mess on the counter.

"That's the greatest thing since self-slicing bread," said Mr Macintosh, impressed. When Mandy continued to show off by turning the lights on and off and I could not join in the fun, I contented myself with examining the toaster, which was really a fascinating contraption.

Because Mandy's mother was a witch and her father was a Muggle, the house had quite a few Muggle appliances powered by electricity. The house worked nicely for both wizards and Muggles, and I'd always found interesting things whenever I came to visit.

"Don't lean over that when you've got the lever down, you'll catch your hair on fire," said Mandy. I leaned back and popped the toaster lever up again.

"Can you put out a fire with magic?" asked Mr Macintosh excitedly.

"Yes, but I'm not going to catch myself on fire just so Mandy can show you," I said, grinning.

* * *

We passed the break very enjoyably, and since the weather was nice almost every day we spent a lot of time outside sitting under the big tree in the front garden. We also devoted a day to browsing Muggle shops in the city. Mr Macintosh even convinced us to spend one day on a long bike ride, which I found terrifying at first, being supported by just a narrow metal frame on wheels and no magic! But Mr Macintosh was patient with us, and we did fine, and ended the day without too many scrapes. I was certain Mandy had used a Balancing Charm on her bike though, because I fell quite a few more times than she did.

Halfway through the week, when Mandy and I were just sitting in her room, an owl flew in through her open window. I paid it little attention, thinking it was delivering a letter to Mandy, but it flapped over to me. I untied the letter from its leg and it took off again towards the window.

"Oooh, who is that from?" asked Mandy with interest, looking up.

I opened the letter. "It's from Luke," I said, recognising the handwriting. He wrote about how much he missed me, how he was waiting to get back to Hogwarts to see me again, and how with me not there to distract him, he'd been doing nothing but homework, and hoped I was having a good time. It was cute, but kind of boring.

I felt like I should write back, but I didn't really want to. I'd had a great holiday, done no work, and actually hadn't even thought about him very much. There was just nothing to say – we'd only been apart a few days and I hadn't done anything worth writing about, except maybe the bike ride, which he would probably laugh at.

"Are you going to write back?" asked Mandy, noticing that I'd tossed Luke's letter on the floor and was inspecting the record player instead.

"Erm… maybe later."

"Don't you miss him?" she asked. "After all that pining over him you did this past term, I'd think you would be a better girlfriend!"

"I wasn't _pining_ ," I laughed, but I didn't answer her question – I had just realised that I didn't really miss him. And then I started to overthink the situation, and our entire relationship. I had never argued with Luke. And he was funny, smart, a good listener, good at Quidditch, and not to mention handsome – in other words, the perfect guy. He was so perfect that I almost felt he was _too_ perfect. As I thought about it, I was unsettled to realise my feelings for him were not what they had been; I was almost… bored… with our perfect relationship.

No, that couldn't be possible; before we were together I had spent so long thinking about him and wondering if he liked me… now that we were together it should stay this way, right?

But I couldn't help feeling that our relationship _wasn't_ everything I hoped it would be. Maybe since we'd only been dating for about two months, it was too early to tell… maybe it would get better.

"Mandy, when you were dating Ethan, did you get bored of him?" I blurted out. Mandy would be able to help me sort through my boy problems a lot easier than I could myself; she'd had many more boyfriends than I had. And I'd noticed through the years that she was much better at analyzing other people's relationships than her own – maybe she had already figured out what was going on with Luke's and my relationship.

"Er… I suppose… that's why I dumped him."

"But you liked him for months before he asked you out, how long did it take before you got bored of him?"

"Well, a few weeks, but you have to remember that this was when we were fourteen. No relationship lasts long when you're that age."

"You stayed with him longer than a few weeks though."

"Right, but it wasn't really a relationship, by that point we were just together out of habit. What can I say, he was my first boyfriend." She paused. "Are you bored of Luke or something?"

"No… well, maybe… I don't know! I'm so confused. I like him a lot, and it's not like there's someone else, but I just…" I shrugged, unable to put my feelings into words.

She smiled knowingly. "That's something only you can figure out."

* * *

The last week of the holiday I spent at home, mainly just doing all the work I had put off during the first week. Nothing seemed radically different about any of my family, but still I wondered if the war was any more of a consideration than it used to be. But it was a nice time off, and I was ready to go back to Hogwarts. Mum Apparated me to the train, where I said goodbye to her and met up with my friends once more.

Back at the castle, I found Luke pretty quickly. I saw him from a distance down the hall and he grinned and started walking over to me. I thought briefly about my conversation with Mandy over the Easter holidays as I approached him, but pushed my doubts out of my mind. After all, I wasn't interested in anyone else, and I was happy with him, so I ran to greet him.


	16. What Friends Are For

Hogwarts welcomed us back from the Easter holidays with a week of beautiful, sunny weather. The Apparition Test was on the first Wednesday of May for those who were old enough to take it, and afternoon classes that day were incredibly dull with so few students there; we didn't cover anything new, and it felt like a waste of time.

On Thursday night about a week later, Mandy, determined to get me back for the early wakeup Charlotte and I had inflicted upon her for her own birthday, informed me that she would wake me up at four in the morning the next day; thankfully, this did not happen.

I woke at a normal time on the 13th, and opened my presents before heading down to breakfast. I had received a lovely pair of earrings from Charlotte, a small lunascope from Mandy, a bunch of roses and a collection of Peppermint Toads and Fudge Tadpoles from Luke, and a new deck of Exploding Snap cards (the very frequent explosions were finally wearing down my old deck), a Nose-Biting Teacup, and various Honeydukes' items from Remus, James, Sirius and Peter. The gift I got from my parents was a stunning gold watch with stars circling the face; it was beautiful, just like my mum's, and the best gift I could ever remember getting from my family. I put it on immediately and got ready to go to breakfast.

After breakfast we unfortunately still had to go to Potions… I couldn't get _everything_ I wanted for my birthday.

Because nearly a third of the people who took last week's Apparition Test had failed, Slughorn decided that we should make 'something amusing' in class to cheer us up, and gave us the hour to make whatever potion we liked. I stared at him, dumbfounded – how could I ever create a remotely good potion if we didn't even have instructions on what to make? There was a greater chance of me accidentally exploding the entire Potions dungeon than inventing my own good potion.

Mandy had already started her potion. I had no idea what it was, but it smelled nice. I rifled through _Advanced Potion-Making_ for some ideas and came across the Giggling Potion, which didn't look too difficult, so I decided I might have a good chance with it.

Halfway through class I looked over at Charlotte's potion. She was making a Chuckling Potion, which I hoped would be similar enough to mine that I could compare mine to hers every so often, but hers was now a clear purple colour instead of the odd green sludgy mixture I had in my cauldron. Perhaps they weren't supposed to be similar anyway…

As I was about to add a bat liver to my cauldron, I noticed that the entire potion had solidified. I couldn't even stir it anymore. I pounded the stirring stick on the top of the solid mass in my cauldron in frustration.

"Is it supposed to be so hard?" I asked Charlotte about my failed potion.

Sirius turned around in his chair and wagged his eyebrows suggestively at me. Prat. I threw the bat liver at him, and it hit him in the face. I was bad enough at potions without his comments, regardless of whether or not he actually said anything out loud.

As satisfied as I was to hear the _smack_ as it hit his face, and the laughter of the other Gryffindor boys, Slughorn had unfortunately seen me. I got a detention for that night, which irked me to no end because I was supposed to be celebrating my birthday. And it was all Sirius's fault. I went to the cupboard to get another bat liver.

"I can't say anything around Sirius, can I?" I asked Charlotte when I got back.

Charlotte laughed. "Well, you were asking for it by saying that."

Mandy agreed. "One could say that he can't do anything around you without you overreacting."

I rolled my eyes. "You're a lot of help. He was asking for a bat liver to the face."

Defence Against the Dark Arts that afternoon was much better. We were working our way through various methods of repelling dementors, which we had written about several weeks before. This week we had been doing the practical application of the Patronus Charm, which Charlotte and I could already do, so we spent most of the lesson talking, and occasionally sending our Patronuses running around the room to win points for Slytherin.

* * *

When I walked into the Potions dungeon for my detention after dinner that evening, Slughorn was sitting behind his desk. "Hello, Professor," I said, trying not to sound too glum.

"Miss Hastings," he greeted me. "There will be someone else joining you in detention today. All you will be doing is cleaning the dungeon. The third-years got a little out of hand this afternoon." He laughed, and flicked his wand and some rags and cleaning solution appeared on a desk. "Your potion today was very peculiar," he said absentmindedly as he glanced at the clock, waiting for the other person. "But I think you have potential – sitting by Miss Macintosh will pay off in the end!" He smiled genially at me, as if expecting what he said to cheer me up.

I forced a smile. "Er, great…"

"Oho! Here he is," said Slughorn, looking towards the door as Sirius walked in; as it turned out, Sirius also had a detention. "I'll let you get to work then," Slughorn said. "I'll be checking in every so often, so make sure you're using that soap and not magic!" He chuckled to himself and left.

I poured some soap on the nearest desk and started scrubbing it. There was some odd burnt residue left over from the third-years' class that afternoon, and it somewhat resembled my congealed attempt at a Giggling Potion.

Sirius started whistling to himself. I scowled. It irritated me how happy he was in detention when I would give anything to be celebrating my birthday with my friends. I scrubbed the desk with vigour, hoping if I worked hard I could be done just a little bit faster.

"You in a hurry?" asked Sirius, grinning as I cleaned the desk at an almost unnatural speed. He was sitting down, leaning lazily against the ingredient store cupboard, his dark hair falling casually into his eyes, as he pointed his wand at a rag that was slowly drifting along the desk. It gave the distinct impression that he was in no hurry and felt the whole thing was a waste of his time.

I couldn't stand it. "Yes I am. It's my birthday today and I don't want to spend the whole evening scraping slime off the desks in the Potions dungeons. But it looks like I'll have to do everything myself, since you're being absolutely no help. You're even using magic, which you're not supposed to do, and still you've only cleaned about three inches of that desk."

"Oh come on, old Sluggy's just left and he won't be back for a while. He'll never know." He still had that aggravating grin on his face.

I didn't answer and finished scraping the last of the mess off the table, still without magic, and moved on to another table. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction that he was right and it would be fine to use magic.

"Why are you in detention anyway?" I finally asked. "I didn't think Slughorn gave you one."

"Nah, this one is from McGonagall. She's run out of things for me to do, and this needed to be done so she's having me help out other professors. And it's been really boring, now that James is too busy being in love to have time for fun anymore, so I'm in no hurry."

"It seems like you're in detention at least once a week!"

He just shrugged. "People keep being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And by that, I mean professors keep showing up when I'm in the middle of something like hexing a Slytherin."

"Ha, ha," I said. Sometimes I wondered whether he said things like that to annoy me, or because he genuinely forgot that I was a Slytherin too. "Hey, Regulus is your brother, right? Does this anti-Slytherin thing keep going when you're at home? Or is it all for show?" I laughed.

But he didn't find this funny at all. He scowled, and the atmosphere in the room changed instantly as he retorted, "Why don't you mind your own business?"

"It was just a question!" I cried. "If you'd rather clean this dungeon in complete silence, be my guest."

And indeed, that was what happened for the next half hour, punctuated by my throwing snide comments at him to see if he'd speak. He did not. For a while, I felt much better, as I could say whatever I wanted and he wouldn't argue with me. But then I grew bored of that, and tried to get him to talk to me again — not easy considering I had just spent the last hour taunting him.

"Let's talk about something else, then," I said. "There's a lot I don't know about you – what's your favourite animal? Or your favourite Hobgoblins song? Mine is 'Sand Witch'."

But he remained silent. As superficially fun as he was on a daily basis, he had walls of iron around him, and there was no way I could get through. Where I was often transparent, he was guarded; I had no idea what was going through his head. He was a complete mystery to me. And I really wanted to know, but it wasn't my business.

"Well, you're an open book, aren't you," I said sarcastically. "Look, I'm sorry I asked you about Regulus. I was just joking, I didn't realise… I shouldn't have. I won't bring it up again. But are you really not going to talk to me at all anymore just because of that? We are friends after all, are we not?"

He became very interested in a large soap bubble on the table. I pointed my wand at his desk and cleaned it instantly, and he finally looked up at me.

"Why are you so grumpy?" I asked. "Even I'm happier than you, and I'm in detention on my birthday with Mr. Mood Swing, who won't speak to me. And I don't believe you've wished me Happy Birthday yet."

Sirius sighed. "It's just family drama, Melanie," he said quietly. "Reg and I aren't on good terms right now, I'm sure you've noticed."

I hadn't realised how upset Sirius was about that, and tried to keep the surprise off my face, giving him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. He flinched, as if wary of me trying to get too close, so I removed my hand from him. "I'm sorry," I said softly. "Is there anything I can… do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

I fidgeted for a moment, and then to fill the silence, I said, "As far as family drama goes, it could be worse, I suppose. My gran once set a fire in our house when she was trying to take a family picture."

Sirius smiled and looked like he might be about to say something, but at that moment, Slughorn walked in to check on us and make sure we weren't using magic. He glanced at the tables and said it was looking nice, and turned to go again.

"I told you it wouldn't be a problem if we used magic," said Sirius with a grin. "I had my wand out on the table the whole time and he didn't say anything."

"Well he saw that you weren't using it, and you've been working slowly enough that he probably figured you hadn't used magic at all."

"That's not the way to get someone to talk to you again," said Sirius. "You're not very nice."

"You had the stupidest reason for not talking to me."

"Yeah, you mentioned that a couple of times while you were begging me to talk to you again."

"I did not beg."

"Sure seemed like it. It's all right, I understand — you missed talking to me."

"Missed you like a wart."

We continued cleaning the desks again and I was in a much better mood. I was working on one of the last few tables when Sirius said, "Come here."

I looked over at him and he was not working, but hunched over by the desk, apparently looking at something on it. "What's that?" I asked as I came to look, but just then he stood up and cried " _Aguamenti!_ " I was standing less than a foot away from him at that point, and got completely drenched by the fountain of water.

He roared with laughter at me standing there dripping, until I had the sense to go get my own wand and sent water after him. A prolonged water fight ensued, and after we were both absolutely soaked, we had a competition to see who could hit a target on the blackboard from the furthest distance away. This was messy, especially once we had gotten to the point when we were standing in the back of the room, as far as we could get from the blackboard. We must have spent an hour shooting water all around the room and laughing.

Slughorn unfortunately chose this point to stop in again and check how we were doing. Sirius and I quickly stowed our wands as we heard the door opening, but there was no hiding the several inches of water on the floor.

"What's this?" he asked. "Trying to flood Hogwarts to get out of your detention?"

"Professor, I'm sorry, you told us not to use magic, so we couldn't clean up all the water we spilled," said Sirius.

"We spilled a bit of water because were cleaning so enthusiastically," I said. "And look, it worked, we're almost done."

Slughorn decided he needed to supervise the rest of our detention, so after he dried off the floor and his shoes, he sat at his desk and graded papers while Sirius and I scrubbed the last desk together.

"Well that was fun," said Sirius as we left. "Who'd have thought it."

"Yes it was, after you'd stopped sulking in the corner while I did the work."

"You seemed quite happy to do the work yourself. You were cleaning the tables so fast you were blurry."

"Maybe that means you need to get your eyes checked."

"I can see just fine, thank you. You were the one who kept missing the board when we shot water at it," he said, grinning.

"Don't start getting delusions of grandeur," I said. "I didn't miss any more than you did."

"So will I be seeing you again for another detention in the near future?" he asked, as we were still just standing in the corridor talking and should probably get on our way.

"If you continue to be a prat and make fun of my potions, there is all likelihood of that happening, unfortunately. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go celebrate my birthday."

"Well great, I think I'll continue making fun of your potions then," he said. I shook my head, laughing. "I'll see you later," he added. "Oh, and Melanie? Happy birthday."

"Thanks."

He gave me a brief hug and then turned to go. I left the detention with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.

* * *

The moment I walked into the Slytherin common room, Mandy, Charlotte, Alanna, Hector and Russell surprised me with a cake. It seemed they had used the time while I was in detention to plan a surprise party for me.

"Why's your hair all wet?" asked Mandy. "You're soaked!"

I looked down and realized that I was indeed still dripping water on the floor. I had forgotten all about it as Sirius and I were having too much fun in detention!

"Oh… yeah. Sirius and I had a water fight," I said, drying my robes quickly with my wand.

"I thought you had a detention," said Charlotte, raising an eyebrow.

"You had a water fight in detention?" asked Hector. "Why don't I ever get such fun detentions?"

We went off to sit in a corner of the common room and ate cake and talked. I didn't even mind the fact that I'd had to wait through a detention to celebrate – the day had actually turned out very well. My birthday was made even better when Elliott Jasper showed up asking how I'd ever managed to find friends to celebrate with, and Russell used the Body-Bind curse on him and left him lying motionless in the middle of the floor like a board, to everyone's great amusement.

Oddly enough, the best part of my birthday had actually been the water fight in detention with Sirius. He was rather fun to be around, and especially after detention with just the two of us, I began to realise just how many things I appreciated about him: the way he laughed - a loud and genuine laugh almost like a dog's bark, the way he challenged me, and his constant thirst for adventure. And the fact that he seemed to hold so many secrets.

As it happened, Sirius and I did end up meeting for more detentions. I was able to keep myself out of trouble, but he wasn't, and he involved me in his mischief. It was because we were passing notes in Transfiguration; I had just opened a scrap of parchment Sirius had lobbed across the room and accidentally laughed out loud at its contents. We had been writing silly comments back and forth about the lecture Professor McGonagall was giving us about an Animagus who could turn into a bat. Sirius had written: _Unfortunate consequences of turning into a bat which the Animagus Nolan neglects to mention: Melanie Hastings will steal your liver and throw it at someone's face._

I laughed and then saw Sirius grinning at me from across the room. But McGonagall caught on to what was happening, and gave us both detention. And it wasn't bad at all – I found myself actually looking forward to our detention, and then we spent the whole time talking and it didn't seem like a punishment. Our plentiful conversation was not just a way to pass the time, but because we found we really enjoyed each other's company when we weren't arguing. In truth, we probably could have finished the work in half the time had we not been so caught up in conversation and friendly banter, but we were in no hurry to leave!

* * *

Mandy informed me one day that she had met the man of her dreams. I told her that she had met Sirius years ago, but it was not Sirius to whom she was referring. She wouldn't tell me who it was, because she said she'd had enough of my teasing her about Sirius and she wasn't going to let Charlotte and me tease her about her new flame.

It didn't take long to discover who the man of Mandy's dreams was. Throughout Charms the afternoon following Mandy's revelations, when we were supposed to be turning vinegar into wine, Mandy was batting her eyelashes and smiling coyly at the oblivious Hufflepuff Francis Madley. It was rather funny for a while, but then I became embarrassed for her and helpfully hit her over the head with the thick book _Quintessence: A Quest_.

Mandy came to her senses and turned back to the glass flask of vinegar on the desk in front of her.

"Try making it a bit more obvious that you like him," suggested Charlotte. "In addition to fluttering your eyelashes, I would advise drooling, maybe walk over and tell him you want to have his children—"

Mandy's flask of vinegar exploded as she rounded on Charlotte, who laughed.

At that moment, little Professor Flitwick came by, and upon seeing the bits of glass and spilled vinegar in front of Mandy, suggested that we practice instead of chatting. As he walked by, I managed to turn my vinegar into a dark red wine, although it still smelled like vinegar.

"Oh fine, show us all up when Flitwick is walking by, that makes me look even stupider," said Mandy, drying the spilled vinegar from her robes.

"Don't complain, I've got to be good at _something_. You saw me in Potions last week."

Charlotte laughed. "Since you mention it, I've always been curious as to how you managed to get an 'Exceeds Expectations' on your Potions O.W.L."

I had always wondered that myself. "Very low expectations," I said.

* * *

When I walked out of Charms, I nearly ran straight into Luke. He would usually meet me after my Charms class, because he had a free period then, but he didn't often stand quite so close to the door. "Hi!" he said. "How was class?"

Mandy and Charlotte walked on without me, and I joined Luke instead. "Good, same as always really. How are you?"

"I was studying for Arithmancy," said Luke. "So I'm pretty tired of that. But it's great to see you!"

"Yeah, I can imagine you'd be tired of thinking after that. Do you want to fly around the grounds with me for a while? I haven't been out on my broom in ages, and it's gorgeous out."

Luke considered it, but eventually declined, saying he wasn't really in the mood for flying since he'd be having his Quidditch practice that evening anyway.

Instead we went to sit outside by the lake for a while and talked, and eventually the conversation turned where I wished it wouldn't. "Are you all right?" he asked. "It seems like you've been a lot more distant since the holidays… or just not as happy."

"I'm fine." It was sweet of him to notice, but it also kind of bothered me. Had he caught on that I wasn't as interested in him as I used to be? It wasn't that I disliked him – he was a wonderful person, but I'd always been worried about whether he really liked me, and constantly trying to impress him. I'd done everything I could to avoid a row, and it worked – we'd never fought at all. But that phase had passed, and I was tired of trying to be the perfect girl for him. I wasn't that girl.

Back then, I hadn't been really comfortable with who I was. I wanted to be liked. And maybe it was my friendship with the Gryffindors that had changed me, how they'd accepted us as friends despite the intense house rivalry, and how squaring off against them all the time in a friendly way had made me rather proud to be a Slytherin – proud of who I was. And they could deal with my smart mouth just fine, so I couldn't have been that bad.

Besides, Luke was very predictable, and as much as I hated to admit it, our relationship had simply gotten boring. I had lost interest. And then out of the blue, I said, "I don't think this is going to work out. Us, I mean." It was like I was listening to someone else saying it using my voice.

"What?" he asked, sitting up straight.

"I mean… you're basically the perfect guy, but I just… I don't know. I'm sorry… it's over."

He stared at me. "You mean… you want to break up?"

"Er… yes."

"This isn't because of that Vanessa girl, is it? She's been smarming up to me for weeks and trying to sneak Love Potions into my pumpkin juice at breakfast, but I promise I never did anything, I like _you_ , not her—"

"No, it's got nothing to do with her."

"Okay… then what's wrong? You don't seem like yourself."

I sighed. "This _is_ me being myself. I haven't been myself since I met you."

He smiled uncertainly. I guess he had taken it to mean that I was just mad about him, when really I felt I'd just been pretending to be someone else since we started dating. Luke may have liked the person he was with, but that wasn't me. I shook my head.

"You've changed," he said simply.

I cringed. What had I gotten myself into? I hadn't wanted to do this today. "Luke, it's just not going to work. I'm sorry…"

I felt so awkward. I had to repress the urge to walk away and hide. The next few minutes were very uncomfortable, as I tried to explain myself better and he struggled to understand why I was ending a perfect relationship in which we'd never even had so much as one argument.

Eventually he got up and left, and I rolled over in the grass, resting my head on my hands as I watched the giant squid float lazily on the surface of the lake. I hoped it would be a few days before I'd see Luke again. He hadn't gotten angry with me, only sad – and whatever the case, I still dreaded the awkwardness of encountering him again.

After I'd spent awhile outside throwing bits of grass and leaves into the lake and watching the giant squid reach out one of its tentacles and grab them, I went back inside and downstairs to the Slytherin dungeon.

I walked into my dormitory and sat on my bed, and the second after Mandy said hello, I told her, "Mandy, I just broke up with Luke and it was so awkward, I had never broken up with anyone before, so I didn't know what I was supposed to say, and now I think I might pretend to be ill so I don't see him in class—"

"Calm down," Mandy interrupted, putting her arm around me. "You'll be fine. You're not even in the same house as him, so you won't see him that much. He'll get over it, and things will just go on as normal. But I'm here for you if you need to talk."

I sighed. "Thanks."

Charlotte called to me from where she was sitting on her bed. "For now, you should come play Exploding Snap with me, Mel."

"Okay," I said, looking around for my new cards. "Hang on, I can't find—"

"Your cards?" she asked. "I took them. They're nice and new, they're so much better than mine. So come on."

We had a good time playing Exploding Snap until the hangings on Charlotte's bed caught fire from the exploding cards and we decided to stop.

* * *

Over the next few days, I kept seeing Luke around and we'd make eye contact sometimes, and that was about it. It could have been worse. Charlotte got into a couple of arguments with her brother Lester, but never wanted to discuss them with Mandy and me. I had the feeling it might have to do with Lester continuing to experiment with the Dark Arts with Mulciber and Snape, though I wasn't sure. And there were always the whispers about things happening outside Hogwarts, the evolvement of a war. But they were only whispers then.

I walked into the Gryffindor common room one evening to work on Transfiguration with the boys. When I went in they were all sitting in chairs by the fire, gathered around something. Before any of them had turned around or had the chance to see me walk in, James said, "Hey, Melanie!"

I was surprised – how had they known I was there already? "Er, hello," I said, walking over to their chairs. Remus was folding up a large piece of parchment, which Peter took and hastily hid it behind his back.

"What's that?" I asked, looking at Peter, who could not have given it away more that this parchment was something he was trying to hide.

"Not for you," said James.

"I didn't ask if it was mine…"

"What's up?" asked Remus.

"I thought we were going to work on Transfiguration?"

"Oh, that," said Sirius, yawning. "Well _you_ can, but I don't need to study, I know all of that stuff." I frowned, as it had always been a source of annoyance for me that Sirius and James could get such good marks without too much effort, but I had to work hard for my mediocre marks.

"He says that," Remus told me, smiling, "but I know for a fact he was reading for Charms until two in the morning yesterday." Sirius frowned at him.

"Cute. Did you sleep with the book under your pillow too?" I asked Sirius.

"Ha ha," said Sirius. "Don't you have work to do?"

"Good comeback, Padfoot," said James, as Remus and I got out our copies of _A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration_ and sat together at a table. James, Sirius and Peter continued to sit by the fire and do nothing.

"How are you doing?" Remus asked me.

"On my Transfiguration?" I asked, turning a page of my textbook.

Remus laughed. "No, I meant in general… I heard you and Luke broke up…"

"Oh," I said, looking up. "Yeah. I'm actually doing well. I just don't like running into him in the corridors, but otherwise fine." I shrugged.

"That's good."

I smiled. "Thanks for asking…" I looked back at the other boys, now charming the rug by the fire to do tricks. "What was that piece of parchment you and Peter were trying to hide?"

He looked at me with a puzzled expression. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Oh well, I had at least tried. We both went back to our studying, occasionally sharing random stories or discussing Transfiguration concepts, and after a while went back to join the other boys by the fire. As we cleared away our study materials from the table, Lily came by from another table and curled up in a nearby chair, leaning against the back of it. After she'd been there about a whole minute, James messed up his hair unnecessarily and sauntered over to Lily. "Hey, Evans," he said happily, and she looked up warily.

"Hello Potter…"

"You look tired."

"Thanks, I try," she said sarcastically.

"Sorry, I didn't mean—"

"It's all right," said Lily, shaking her head. She looked up at James with an odd, calculating expression.

"Smooth, Prongs," said Sirius from where he was sitting several feet away, but luckily it didn't seem as if James or Lily heard. James sat in a chair across from Lily and they started talking; he seemed very interested to hear about Lily's second article in _Witch Weekly_ , which had followed up her successful first one. By that point Remus and I had come back to the chairs by the fire, and as soon as we sat down, Charlotte and Mandy walked in the portrait hole and came to join us.

"Hey!" I said. "What held you up?"

"Mandy was talking with the man of her dreams," said Charlotte. "I could not get her away from him."

Mandy raised her eyebrows. "Charlotte accidentally turned someone's head into a watermelon in the library, so we had to take the girl up to the hospital wing."

I laughed. "Who?"

Charlotte shrugged. "We don't know, she had a watermelon for a head, we couldn't exactly tell what she looked like."

"Remind me to stay away from you," said James, who had just walked back from talking with Lily. "I'd rather not accidentally get turned into a watermelon."

"No, I'd turn you into one on purpose."

We stayed around talking for a while, and then at one point Peter finally got up to drag the rug back in front of the fireplace, after several unsuccessful attempts to move it back with magic.

In the chair Peter had just vacated was the folded parchment. I picked it up and opened it; it was blank. I turned it upside down, and nothing changed. But there had to be more to it than this – why were they so keen to hide it?

I poked it with my wand and muttered, " _Specialis Revelio_ ," hoping it would work and reveal something. And indeed, as if a hand were writing on it, words suddenly formed.

 _Mr Moony presents greetings to Miss Hastings, but wonders why she so rudely stole this parchment._

I gaped at it, and then looked back at the boys. "Hey!" shouted Sirius, as he realized I had the parchment, and he leapt off the sofa to come get it. I held on to it, however, and watched the writing continue to form.

 _Mr Padfoot thinks Miss Hastings is stunningly hot but still advises her to mind her own business._

Sirius's eyes widened and he reached over and grabbed the parchment from my hands.

"What _is_ this?" I demanded, flustered.

He didn't answer me, and instead addressed the other boys, slightly red in the face. "We need to fix this, it's got something wrong with it. It hasn't done this before." Remus took the parchment from him, and as he and the others saw it, they cracked up laughing. James was nearly incapacitated due to laughter, having fallen over on the sofa, and Peter was rolling on the floor.

"I didn't know you were capable of such eloquence," Remus laughed.

"Shut up, you lot!" said Sirius. "This is not a laughing matter."

"It certainly is – what exactly did you say about me again?" I contradicted, dissolving into giggles myself.

The rest of the evening consisted of more fun and quite a few more jokes at Sirius's expense, but Mandy attentively watched both me and Sirius for the rest of the evening. I finally asked her about it when we left the Gryffindor common room and were headed back to our own.

"What was that weird staring about, Mandy?"

"There was a lot to stare at," she said simply, a lopsided smile on her face. "Don't think I didn't notice you two – I saw what was going on."

"Nothing was going on!" I laughed. "It was that stupid trick parchment of theirs, but this time it played tricks on him."

"That's not what it seemed like to me."

"What, you think he actually fancies me?" I said sarcastically. "Of course not, Mandy. You're reading into it too much. And I'd just as soon fancy him as fancy a flobberworm."

She looked suspiciously at me. Charlotte asked her, "What happened to Francis Madley, huh? I thought he was the man of your dreams."

"He is—" she protested.

"Yeah," I said, "I didn't even know you still liked Sirius – you've stopped drooling around him, so I thought you had moved on."

Mandy scowled. "I got over him ages ago! How did this suddenly go from go from me teasing you, to you teasing me? You're going to make fun of me about everything, aren't you."

I grinned. "What are friends for?"


	17. In the Dark

A few days later, after I had moved a suit of armour next to the Gryffindor common room entrance and was charming it to throw a pie into the face of the next unlucky Gryffindor to enter the hallway (a project severely hampered by the shrill objections of the Fat Lady's portrait watching me), the portrait swung away from the wall and someone started walking out. I hadn't quite finished my prank yet, so I hid behind the suit of armour with my pie so that I could finish after the person walked away.

Unfortunately, the person leaving was Sirius, and he spotted me immediately.

"Hastings, what are you doing there?" he asked.

"Er…" I said, still crouching behind the suit of armour while holding the pie tin. Sirius walked towards me and I couldn't possibly talk my way out of the situation, so I told him. "I was rigging this suit of armour to throw a pie at you. Brilliant, right?"

"I'm appalled," he said. "That's a waste of a perfectly good pie." He reached out and took it from me, and I stepped out from behind the suit of armour into the corridor. As I watched, he pointed his wand at the pie, dividing it neatly into eight slices. Then he took one out and started eating it, spilling crumbs all over.

"You're disgusting," I told him.

"Want one?" He held out the pie pan towards me, but I pushed it away.

"So, have you fixed that parchment yet?" I asked him with a wry smile. "Personally, I don't think it needed fixing, I rather liked it the way it was."

Sirius paused, holding his crumbling piece of pie in mid-air. "Why's that, because you fancy me?"

"No," I laughed. "But your reaction to the parchment was priceless."

"Are you sure you don't fancy me?" he asked with a grin. "I would understand if you did."

"Damn, you've figured me out," I said sarcastically. "Let's elope tonight."

He smirked. "Ambitious, are we? I guess I can't help it – it's my animal magnetism, girls are just drawn to me."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, well then find one who cares. I'll take that pie back, too, if you don't mind – I was in the middle of something when you walked in."

"What you were doing is called sabotage," he said. "So no, I'm not giving this back."

"Spoilsport."

"Saboteur."

"Prat."

"Okay, I'll give it back… if you admit you're attracted to me."

"It's against my morals to lie," I said airily.

" _You've_ got morals?" He snorted. "I guess, if you count taking the easy way out of any situation as having morals." Then he laughed, as if he thought his comment had been particularly witty.

"Of course I have, you twit," I said, scowling. His accusation only made me angrier because it was, in fact, the slightest bit true. "We're done now. I have better things to do than talk to you."

Before I'd gotten more than a few steps away from him, he caught up to me. "Ouch, that was harsh. Don't you care about my feelings?" But he didn't look hurt at all; he was still smiling.

"Your feelings? That's funny, because you clearly don't care about anyone else's. I don't exist only for you to laugh at. Not everything is about you!" Something about him just wound me up, and now we were arguing. I didn't even understand it myself; we'd been getting on just fine before.

He started. There was an odd expression in his grey eyes. "That's really what you think of me?" he asked softly, the self-assured tone now gone from his voice. "It's not true. I _do_ care—"

"Whatever," I interrupted, starting to walk away.

"Well I'm not laughing now," said Sirius angrily. "Doesn't matter anyway – why should I care when you're such a bitch?"

I wished I was the one holding the pie plate, because then I could have thrown it at him. So I held my hands behind my back, as if to make sure neither of them reached out and punched Sirius of their own accord. With absolutely nothing to say to him, and as I had no desire to keep talking anyway, I stormed down the hall away from him without another word, blinking away the tears that began to fill my eyes. What had started out as petty quibbling had escalated into a very heated argument within minutes, for absolutely no reason.

To put a significant amount of distance between Sirius and myself, I walked out of the castle doors and outside on the grounds where I could be away from people. However, my solitude was interrupted by the absolute last person I wanted to see, other than Sirius: Vanessa Saltz and her little posse were walking in my direction, and although they didn't say anything to me, I saw them whispering to one another and giggling. I couldn't hear what they were saying, and it may not have had anything to do with me, but it just made me feel worse as I could imagine it being any number of cruel things, based on our previous encounters.

Before I could end up doing something I'd regret, I hurried past them, only to overhear a snippet of conversation about my hair, and surreptitiously reached up to smooth the frizzy curls. It was only eleven in the morning and I had already wanted to punch two people; it did not bode well for the rest of the day. So I stalked off moodily with no particular direction in mind until I realised I had reached the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. As no one was allowed to go in, I was about to turn around and leave, but decided to stay because this was probably the only place on the grounds where no one ever hung around. And technically, I was not _in_ the forest, just next to it.

Finally alone, I let out the tears that had been trying to escape all morning. What had I done to deserve this? One of my good friends had essentially told me I wasn't his friend anymore, and people I barely knew hated me for no reason. I usually tried not to let stuff like this get to me, but after everything this morning, I was miserable.

I sat on the grass and just stared into the forest for a while. My curiosity got the better of me, and after I'd calmed down, I stood up and wiped my eyes, and cautiously began to walk into the forest.

Suddenly I ran into something invisible, and gasped. I thought it might be one of the Gryffindor boys in their Invisibility Cloak, because I recalled that they liked to run around in here for Merlin only knew what reason. "Remus?" I asked hesitantly. But there was no answer. "James?"

"What're yeh doin' in here?" asked a voice. I turned around, and Hagrid the gamekeeper was approaching from his hut on the edge of the grounds. He towered over me, as he was about twice the size of a normal person.

"Nothing," I muttered, and started to walk out of the forest. I didn't want to get in trouble, and I didn't know how Hagrid would react to me being alone in the forest.

"Were yeh lookin' at the thestral? Can yeh see it?" he asked.

"The what?" I said, stopping briefly. Oddly, Hagrid didn't seem too concerned that I was out of bounds, but was instead looking in front of me, where the thing I'd run into was standing.

"Thestral. It's right in front o' yeh. 'Course, it's invisible, so yeh probably can't see it. Most people can't."

"Er, what is it?"

"It's a big winged horse. Hogwarts has got a few of 'em livin' in here. Usually further in. This is a newer one, he mighta bin confused…"

"Why do we have invisible horses in the forest?"

"They're real clever, have a great sense o' direction… an' they pull the Hogwarts carriages."

"Why would we need them to do that when the carriages can move by themselves?" I asked, and then realised that he must mean the carriages had never moved by themselves, but had been pulled by the invisible horses all along. The carriages moved so smoothly that I would never have thought they were pulled by anything but magic. Since there was no need for Hagrid to answer my question, I continued. "Can you see them? What do they look like?"

"Yeah, they're black, an' got whitish eyes that sorta glow… their heads look a bit like a dragon's."

It was fascinating that some people could see them and some could not; I reflected that it would have been a much better use of my time if, rather than taking Divination in my third year, I'd taken Care of Magical Creatures like Mandy. The only thing that had stopped me, of course, was that Professor Kettleburn, who taught Care of Magical Creatures, had lost half his limbs to dangerous creatures he was supposed to be minding and I hadn't wanted to meet the same fate.

"Why can't I see them?"

"They're invisible, unless yeh've seen death, then yeh can see 'em," he replied. "Some people consider 'em sorta unlucky 'cause of that, but they're not."

I talked with Hagrid about thestrals a bit longer, until he asked me, "Yeh're not supposed ter be here in the forest, are yeh? Go on, get outta here."

It had taken him a while to catch on, probably because he'd been more preoccupied with the thestral, but I was glad he hadn't said anything immediately. I looked up at him, trying to come up with an excuse, but I saw that under his wild tangle of hair and beard he was smiling. He wasn't angry at me, which was good because I was sure that he could be very scary if he had been angry. I said goodbye and began to walk back out.

As I headed back up to the castle, my mind turned back to my row with Sirius. The encounter with Vanessa had flown from my mind; I was far less concerned with what Vanessa thought of me. I did care about Sirius though. He was a friend – or at least I had thought he was – and I wanted to know what was going on and why he had treated me that way. I kept replaying our argument in my mind. Sometimes it just made me more angry with him, but other times I was disgusted with myself for the things I had said, and the way he'd reacted. I could still see the expression on his face when I'd accused him of not having feelings. Shock, anger, a bit of disappointment. Did he care that much about what I thought of him? Maybe I should choose my words more carefully next time…

I needed to talk to someone. Remus would have been my first choice because I knew he'd understand and he'd know the right things to say to me, but he was too close to Sirius. Remus also might not be so keen to talk to me since I'd just had a row with one of his best friends.

When I walked into the Slytherin common room, Hector Branstone was sitting on the sofa by the stairs, idly doodling on a textbook. "Hector, please explain to me how the male mind works," I said as I threw myself onto the sofa next to him.

He laughed. "Got your eye on someone new already?"

"No. And I don't think he likes me either, I'm sure he's just making fun of me – but I just don't understand what is going on! And we just got into a fight, it came out of nowhere!"

"Who?"

For some reason I felt like concealing all the details, but I wasn't really sure why. "I'm not telling you," I said, "I just want to know why men are obnoxious."

" _I'm_ not obnoxious."

"No, you're not… just help me!"

Hector considered it. "All right, if you tell me how girls' minds work. And who you're talking about."

I scowled, and he waited patiently for me to spill the beans. Sometimes I hated being such an open book, but I couldn't help it. So I told him.

As Hector didn't really know Sirius that well, he theorised that Sirius either liked me but didn't know how to say it, or was irritable from dealing with some deep internal struggle that was far out of my comprehension, or he was simply an annoying guy.

So it meant that Sirius was annoying. This much I could have figured out on my own. And then I had to deal with Hector's many questions as to why girls always went everywhere in groups, why they made a big deal out of unimportant things, why they said the opposite of what they felt, and why they created drama. Our conversation ended with us both reflecting on the fact that all people are confusing, and from there it devolved into a session of us making goat noises at each other and laughing – at least until other people walked into the common room.

* * *

It appeared that Sirius hadn't told his friends about our row – I had been sure he'd want to complain about me to his friends, but then again he'd never seemed forthcoming with discussing things that bothered him. Remus had told me once (after the detention when I'd mentioned Regulus and made Sirius moody for half an hour) that Sirius rarely talked about things that troubled him, even to his best friends; he'd simply sulk, or else he'd just snap and do something reckless and so I shouldn't have taken that personally, because that's how he was.

But this time, it was personal. And from my own experience, I knew Sirius well enough to know that he wasn't going to apologise, and if he did, it would only be if I did so first. But I had nothing to apologise for, so I didn't say anything to him as I passed by him and his friends on our way outside one sunny afternoon. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Sirius watching me, but when I turned to look at him, he seemed to be very interested in the hourglasses on the wall holding the House points. Gryffindor was in the lead.

Lily Evans and Mary Macdonald then arrived in the hall on their way outside as well, and I abruptly veered off to join them instead.

James noticed, of course. "Good afternoon," he said politely.

Lily frowned at him. "Er, hi," she said. Then she turned her green eyes towards me instead.

"Hey," I said. "How are you?"

"Great. Mary and I were just about to – er – do homework," she said, with half a glance at James again. "You can come join us if you want."

I grinned, knowing that they had no intention of doing any such thing. "Thanks, I think I will," I said. We walked to a grassy area of the grounds, and she and Mary both threw their bags on the ground and we lay down in the sun. I could see the four Gryffindor boys settling down in the shade of a large beech tree over by the lake.

"What's going on with you and Sirius?" Lily asked me.

"I have no idea," I said. "We rowed a few days ago over absolutely nothing, and then started listing off the things we hated about each other. Who does that? We're both terrible people!"

Mary shook her head, grinning. "Well if you don't fancy Sirius, next time you're about to fight with him, send him off in my direction instead."

"I'm sorry," Lily told me. "Boys can be so confusing." Her eyebrows knitted, and her eyes lingered on the tree beneath which James and his friends sat. Mary followed Lily's gaze, and then gave me a knowing smile over Lily's head.

"In other news," said Mary suddenly, "check out this old French play I've just started reading." She grabbed a book from inside her bag, the cover of which read _Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds (Alas, I've Transfigured My Feet)_. "It has possibly the worst plot I've ever read, but it's just so entertaining! You both have to read it, I'll loan it to you."

"Mary, I don't speak French," I said.

"Neither do I," said Lily, leaning back and lying in the grass. "Translate some for us."

"With an authentic French accent, please," I added.

So Mary acted out a scene for Lily's and my amusement, her fake French accent terrible, and the appreciative audience only grew with the appearance of Mandy and Charlotte half an hour later. It was a wonderful afternoon in the sun and the warm breeze. All across the grounds I could see groups of people sitting in the grass enjoying the day. It was a shame we had exams in a few weeks; I could easily have forgotten about exams with weather like this!

* * *

As Mandy, Charlotte and I were headed back inside to the Slytherin common room later that afternoon, I saw Luke coming in from a different direction. I attempted to hide behind Charlotte, realised this would look stupid, and then spotted Althea Seward, and immediately ran to talk to her so I would be busy when Luke walked by.

However, it didn't go quite as I planned; although she smiled when she saw me, her smile faded as Mandy and Charlotte approached.

"Please don't tell me you're literally going to be hiding from your ex-boyfriend for the rest of the year," said Charlotte.

I ignored her. "What's up?" I asked Althea, noticing her nervous expression as she saw my friends.

"Are they your friends?" she asked timidly.

"Aren't you the girl whose head we turned into a watermelon last week?" Charlotte asked. "If so, I'm sorry. It was an accident."

"You're so mean!" I told Charlotte. The story had been hilarious when Mandy and Charlotte had first told it, but they had neglected to mention that they'd done it to possibly the shyest, quietest girl at Hogwarts.

"That's all right, Madame Pomfrey fixed it pretty quickly," said Althea. "It could have been much worse. At least I wasn't a pumpkin – eurgh."

"How can you not like pumpkin?" I exclaimed, and she laughed.

I was impressed at her graceful ability to just let anything slide, never rattled. Maybe Althea had everything all figured out. I figured I could probably peacefully disregard Vanessa, but what was it about Sirius that made him impossible to ignore, and compelled me to spar with him?

* * *

But news from outside added perspective to my mundane problems. At breakfast the next day, an owl arrived with Mandy's _Daily Prophet_ , just like usual. I was sitting opposite her at the table, and as she unrolled the paper, I saw a headline announcing that the Dark Mark had been set above three houses last night. A picture revealed a pile of rubble beneath a symbol of a skull with a snake protruding from the mouth, hovering in the sky above like an eerie constellation.

"When is this going to stop?" asked Mandy sadly to no one in particular. "Death Eaters went around killing Muggle-borns for absolutely no reason and set Voldemort's sign above the houses to scare people… I'm sick of it. Every time I open the newspaper there's always disappearances and deaths."

"It's awful," I said. So far we hadn't read about the disappearance of anyone we knew well, but some people at Hogwarts had already lost relatives.

Charlotte had an ugly expression on her face as she stared at the _Daily Prophet_. "I don't believe it…" she said quietly, shaking her head.

"I know," said Mandy gently. "I can't believe people do this either."

"It's not just that," said Charlotte, looking up at Mandy. She glanced down the table, where Lester, Snape and Mulciber were sitting, and then back at her half-finished breakfast. "Come with me," she said, and stood up.

Somewhat confused, Mandy and I left with her and we walked outside into the courtyard. "I should have told you ages ago," Charlotte said agitatedly, not at all her cool, collected self. "I've just been keeping you in the dark, when I've known for ages, but I didn't know what to do… I still don't know…"

"What are you on about?" asked Mandy, looking at Charlotte with concern.

Charlotte finally faced us, and said grimly, "Lester has become a Death Eater."

My jaw dropped. I was shocked, and horrified. "What? When? Why didn't you stop him?"

"I tried," she said. "He let slip months ago that he was planning to join, so I talked to him a lot about it, and I told him he was too young, and it wasn't safe, and that he'd have to kill people if he was a Death Eater… but he was already convinced. Then over the Easter holidays he disappeared a lot while we were home, and I never knew or cared where he was… But then one day at dinner he just told us that he and his friends had joined the Death Eaters."

There was a silence while Mandy and I goggled at her. "But… why?" I cried incredulously. "Why did he join?"

"I think it's because Lester wants a taste of power. He's always trying to prove himself, he's always been ambitious, and this was just a way for him to be powerful. And he'll get that if he's allied with You-Know-Who, because You-Know-Who is all about power."

"What did your family say when he just announced he'd joined?" Mandy asked tentatively.

"My parents were both thrilled. My father especially – I never told you this either, but he's a Death Eater too. He went to school with You-Know-Who."

"Why didn't you tell us before?" I asked. Despite Charlotte's tendency to gossip about other people, she could keep a secret very well – she kept her own feelings under lock and key, after all.

Charlotte frowned. "If your dad and your brother were Death Eaters, would you tell everyone?"

That shut me up. And then, unbidden, I began wondering about my own family. Now that I knew someone whose family were Death Eaters, I felt ill considering the idea of my parents and brother supporting Voldemort's aims. True, it was a big difference between appreciating Voldemort's power and actually becoming a Death Eater, but it seemed like a slippery slope after hearing Charlotte say that her sixteen-year-old brother was a Death Eater.

"And when you said 'his friends'," said Mandy, "does that mean Mulciber and Snape?"

"I don't know, he didn't say who," said Charlotte. "But I assume that's who he meant, they're his closest friends. And Mulciber and Snape don't really talk to me anymore; over the year we've really drifted apart because they've been getting even more into the Dark Arts… but I keep trying to find out for sure if they joined."

My mind was reeling. Snape had once been my friend, and now he was potentially a Death Eater. I had never liked Mulciber or Charlotte's brother Lester, but I thought they just liked being bullies – I would not have imagined they wanted to join Voldemort.

"And because I keep asking about it, and I'm trying to stay on good terms with him," Charlotte continued, "Lester is trying to recruit me. He said he'll introduce me to You-Know-Who and see how I feel then."

I just gaped at her. Mandy said, "You know he's lying. He's not going to be able to drag Voldemort along with him wherever he wants, whenever he feels like it."

"Unless Voldemort is trying to get into the castle," I said, a thrill of realisation and dread filling me. I shivered. "Remember when we discussed this in October? We couldn't imagine there being Death Eaters at Hogwarts then. And know we know there is one – what do we do?"

"Don't tell anyone," said Charlotte, glowering. "I'm not trying to defend Lester, but I don't want him getting sent to Azkaban. He's my brother. I'm just… I'm worried about him. He doesn't know what he's gotten himself into."

I didn't know what to say, so I just gave her a hug, and Mandy joined in, wrapping her arms around the two of us. "I'm so sorry, Char," I mumbled uselessly.

"Thank you for telling us," said Mandy. "You know we're both here for you, always."

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you think, whether it's about the story or even just your favourite colour! (Mine is green.)**


	18. Unintended

With Charlotte's new revelation in mind, I took extra notice of Lester, Mulciber and Snape in the common room when I saw them sitting together, to see if I could find any indication Snape and Mulciber were Death Eaters, but was unable to find out any more than she had.

Mandy and Charlotte continued to hang around with the Gryffindor boys, whom I was still avoiding, even though by this point I didn't really know why anymore. But while this was happening I spent time with Hector and Russell instead, or with Lily and her friends (I was a bit of a fifth wheel in that case, but they were friendly, so it was fine for the time being). I did miss Remus, James, Peter, and Sirius, however I was still angry at Sirius and didn't want to deal with any more of his rudeness.

One evening as I was getting into bed, and Mandy and Charlotte had just returned from Gryffindor Tower, Mandy parted the curtains of my bed and leapt onto it, landing on my knees.

"Ouch! Mandy, what in Merlin's name are you doing? I'm trying to go to sleep!"

"No you're not, you just got into bed two seconds ago. I was just wondering why you and Sirius are acting weird around each other. I know you got into a fight a while back, but honestly can't you just stop running away and apologise for whatever happened? Charlotte and I miss you when we go visit the Gryffindors."

I attempted to roll over and ignore her so I could sleep, but she was still sitting on me and I couldn't turn over. So I scowled. "No," I said. "Sirius gets away with anything, and I doubt he's apologised for anything in his life. I'm not just going to go begging for his forgiveness."

Mandy shrugged. "Well, do what you think is right. He's not as insensitive as you've made him out to be, though."

"Yes he is," I said, laughing.

"Well, I only hope he's not as stubborn as you, or you two will never speak again."

I grabbed my pillow out from underneath my head and shoved it into her face, and she shrieked and pushed it back down at me; before I knew it, three more pillows were flying through the air. I rolled out of my bed as Mandy stood up to get Alanna with my pillow, and the five of us in our dormitory ran around and had an immensely entertaining pillow fight, which involved a lot of feathers in the air and a lot of _Reparo_.

On my way to class the following day, I heard loud laughter behind me indicating the Gryffindor boys were approaching. When I turned around, Remus shoved Sirius forward towards me with a laugh. I hastened my pace, but then came across Elliott Jasper and Darian Wilkes, so I slowed down again, as I would rather talk to the Gryffindors than to Jasper and Wilkes. Besides, I couldn't avoid Sirius forever, and I was even starting to miss fighting with him. So I offered them a tentative smile as they approached me, and despite my silent treatment of Sirius over the past couple of days, now that we were stuck walking together I found that I really did want to talk with him again. "All right, Sirius?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Can't complain." Then he eyed me intently. "Er, you don't hate me, do you?"

My coolness towards him dissipated instantly. "No, of course I don't _hate_ you. But after last week I'm a bit annoyed at you."

"Yeah, I wanted to apologise for what I said then; I feel horrible about it."

"Oh," I said, stopping. "Thanks. I'm sorry too, I shouldn't have said what I did."

We just looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, until he reached into his bag and pulled out a small box of sweets. "Maybe this will make it up to you?" he offered.

"Thank you, Sirius, that's really thoughtful," I said, taking it from him.

"So… we're good then, right?" he asked. "I've really missed having you around, you know."

The smile on his face wasn't the teasing one I usually saw, but an honest, sincere one. "Likewise," I said, and reached my arms forward; he enveloped me in a tight hug that radiated warmth all through me. I couldn't help smiling; Sirius was a fantastic hugger. But eventually, like all good things, it had to end. "We're going to be late for class," I muttered into his shoulder.

"Oh yeah." He let go of me, and together we walked to the Charms classroom, and snuck inside to arrive at our seats just before Flitwick began the lesson.

Sirius passed a note to me during class, to which I declined to respond, recalling the detentions we'd received from Professor McGonagall for this exact behaviour earlier in May. But I met up with him after class instead, and to my surprise, he walked with me rather than with his three best friends this time. At first our discussion was more polite than usual, but it quickly deteriorated into the teasing banter that meant all was normal.

And all was normal indeed. I discovered this when I opened the box of sweets at lunch and tried one, stupidly unsuspecting as I was.

"Mel – those are Singing Sweets," warned Mandy, but it was too late.

"What?" I asked frantically, before standing up against my will and belting out a rousing chorus of 'Danny the Muggle.' At first, the buzz of conversing voices in the Hall went silent as everyone turned to stare; then a few Hufflepuffs joined in singing with me, and at my side, Hector attempted to harmonise – perhaps he'd eaten one too. Across the Hall, the Gryffindor boys were beside themselves with laughter. When I finished my song, scattered applause reached me from a good number of the Hufflepuffs, a few Ravenclaws, the Gryffindor boys, and (to my intense embarrassment) Professor Dumbledore.

I set my fork aside, turned to Mandy, Charlotte, and Hector, and calmly informed them, "If you will excuse me, I have to go murder Sirius Black." With that, I strolled across the Hall to the Gryffindor table and punched Sirius's arm. "You complete prick!"

"Oh, hello," said Sirius conversationally. "I must say, you have a lovely voice, and I do appreciate your sharing it with us."

"You really are the worst," I told him.

He grinned. "But you love it."

I tried to frown, but couldn't keep a straight face, because the whole thing was objectively quite funny. Instead, I satisfied myself by casting a quick charm so that the back of Sirius's robes said _Slytherins Rule!_ , and returned to my table.

* * *

Saturday was Slytherin's last Quidditch game of the year, against Hufflepuff. And for the first of Slytherin's games this year, I was back in the stands again, watching the team play. After having had a taste of being on the team earlier this year, I desperately wanted to be out there on the pitch again, but unless Slytherin's team had a better Captain next year, those two were likely to be my only Quidditch games at Hogwarts.

Mandy, Charlotte, Russell and I sat together; Hector wasn't with us because he was on the team. Mandy's new interest, Francis Madley, was also playing. Charlotte and I asked Mandy whether she wanted Slytherin or Hufflepuff to win, because if Hufflepuff won she could go congratulate Francis.

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Don't be daft, of course I want Slytherin to win."

It was only Slytherins who wanted Slytherin to win – the other houses were all supporting Hufflepuff – but this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Slytherin's team was generally unpopular with the other houses, which was probably because our Captain was such an arse and encouraged the team to use dirty tactics.

I watched Nott hit a Bludger and thought about how much better I could do it if it were me out there instead of him. Hector made some great goals and we cheered for him. At one point Slytherin had a twenty-point lead, but eventually Hufflepuff pulled ahead, and their Seeker caught the Snitch to boot, leaving Slytherin in the dust.

Slytherin's loss to Hufflepuff unfortunately put Gryffindor in position for first place in the Quidditch Cup. So of course, for several days after the game, James could be seen showing off on his broom whenever he had a few minutes of spare time. One such afternoon he was lazily drifting along by the lake, occasionally doing a dive, at which point several of the girls nearby would gasp or scream, only to laugh again when he easily pulled out of the dive. Lily was sitting by the edge of the lake with a book, and was glancing up at James surreptitiously every few seconds.

As I approached, she looked back down at her book, and then up at me, and informed me, rather unnecessarily, "Potter showing off is the only thing happening around here. I was observing, not checking him out. Just so we're clear."

"Okay," I said, grinning. "I won't tell."

She smiled, although she looked like she was trying not to. "He actually is a great Quidditch player," she acknowledged, "but if he knew I thought so, he'd show off even more, and insist that it means I like him!"

"No he wouldn't. He's dating Vivian Bell."

"Not anymore," said Lily. "They broke up a few days ago – she's a seventh year and about to move to Ireland, so I guess they didn't think long distance made sense. So he's single again, not that I care, only it means he might start pestering me again."

He did nothing of the sort, but merely kept flying around. At times he seemed distracted, and I followed the path of his eyes to Vivian by the lake with her friends; one such time, he kept watching her and sailed right into a nearby tree. Lily laughed. "Too cool to watch where he's going?" she asked, but looked over anxiously at the tree as James's broom fell to the ground. James levitated himself down, unharmed, a few seconds later, and Lily's eyes were back on her book.

"Anyway," Lily told me, "I've noticed that you and Sirius have been spending loads more time together lately!"

"Well yeah, we're talking again, if that's what you mean." And I'd even managed to trick Sirius into eating a questionable Liquorice Wand yesterday, which had made him belch for about twenty seconds. A girl walking past had given him a disgusted look, and I couldn't stop from laughing the entire time.

Lily merely smiled and turned a page of her book. "Have you done the Runes translation for Monday?" she asked.

"Not yet," I said. "I'll probably do it this weekend. I'm really enjoying this sunny weather, and pretending exams aren't in a week and a half…"

"It's really interesting," said Lily. "It's this old text about how the Levitation Charm was invented."

"Really? How?" I asked. I'd never given much thought to how spells were invented. Could I invent my own spell? Would one just string together some Latin words and it'd automatically be a spell?

She only answered by holding out her copy of the textbook. Just then, Mary Macdonald and Carol Whitby, two of Lily's Gryffindor friends, showed up. I stayed a little while longer with them, and then departed to start studying – in truth I had spent the entire morning out enjoying the sunshine, and I really did need to get to work if I wanted to pass my exams.

* * *

That Sunday after I'd spent hours in the library finishing my Ancient Runes translation and then talking with Remus and Peter, who were also studying, I was headed back to the common room and took a shortcut through a tapestry. As I was about to come through the tapestry on the other end concealing the exit, I heard the voices of James and Sirius, in low tones as they walked through the hallway beyond the tapestry. Sirius's voice said, "I really like her. I never thought I'd say that about a Slytherin."

Did Sirius have a crush on a Slytherin? It was the last thing I would ever expect from him. And I had never heard Sirius sound so unsure of himself; it was oddly amusing to me. I remained hidden in the staircase behind the tapestry, waiting to find out who it was. Maybe it was Mandy! Too bad he hadn't come to this realisation earlier, back before Mandy moved on.

James laughed. "Ask her out then."

"I didn't mean like that," said Sirius defensively. "I just meant that she's not bad, I like her as a friend. Besides, I'd never date a Slytherin."

"I don't know, mate," said James. "I'm not convinced. I know you better than that. When you say things like that, it means you're mad about a girl. And she's not a bad choice, I suppose… it'd be better if she wasn't a Slytherin, obviously, but you'll have to deal with that…"

"Oi," said Sirius. "I meant nothing by that comment. You'd understand if you weren't such a hopeless romantic."

James was undeterred. "Remember when you indirectly told her she was, and I quote, 'stunningly hot'?"

"Shut up," said Sirius. There was a scuffling noise and laughter and I assumed that Sirius had punched James, or something similar had happened. As James's words finally registered with me, I froze, my breath catching in my throat. Sirius had said that about _me_ , on that stupid parchment of his. I had thought that was all a joke at the time. Didn't he dislike me? Maybe he had said that about several different girls – he could actually be referring to anyone.

"You used to say much sillier things about Vivian," said Sirius. I couldn't hear James's response, as they were too far down the corridor now. I waited a few seconds to make sure they were actually gone, and poked my head out of the tapestry.

As I walked back to the common room, I thought over what I had just overheard. Did Sirius like me? All we ever did was get into fights. I didn't give him the attention he seemed to thrive on; I responded to him with sarcasm rather than interest or flirting in return. So I had no idea what to think. But despite Sirius's denial, James had appeared to think there was more to it than Sirius admitted, and James knew him better than anyone. And so I found myself wondering if there was something there… if Sirius did like me.

I wasn't even interested in him; I liked him as a friend, although he annoyed me most of the time. And I was worried that now I'd overheard his conversation with James, now that this idea had been planted in my head, it would be awkward next time I saw him. I wished I hadn't heard anything.

Mandy was lying on her bed as I walked in, folding a piece of parchment. "Hey!" she greeted me as I walked in.

"Hi," I said, trying to stop thinking about what I had just heard, and threw my Ancient Runes textbook and translation into my trunk at the foot of my bed.

"I got a letter from my mum today," said Mandy, holding up the piece of parchment. "You're invited to stay for part of the summer. Dad added in some stuff too, he recommended that we go to the cinema and see some new film called Star Wars."

"Hmm," I said distractedly.

"What's up with you?"

"Nothing," I said, and sat down on my bed.

"You always say that and I always find out what it is. It's not nothing. Tell me!" She sat up and stared at me.

She had an uncanny way of knowing when anything was up with me, and right now I resented it. Besides, I was sort of rubbish at keeping my feelings a secret. I fidgeted a bit while I wondered how to tell her that the guy she used to like for five years might fancy me. "Er, you probably don't want to hear it."

"Why not? Something bad happened? Is everything okay?"

"It's fine, nothing bad, actually it's very funny… it's just that you won't like it. Well, maybe – it might not mean what I think it means, but it's very… it… just forget about it."

"Well that made a lot of sense. What potion are you on?"

I laughed. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to keep a secret from you, I just overheard Sirius and James talking about… stuff. It was nothing important, just their boring conversation. Can you believe exams are in a week?"

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Clever topic change. No, I can't believe it, I'll be up for another three hours at least, studying for Transfiguration." She looked at me again, showing every sign of wanting to ask me more about Sirius and James, but thankfully didn't say anything.

"Yeah, I think I need to work on that too." I dug out _A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration_ and my notes from my trunk and lay on my bed, reading.

"Sorry for bothering you," said Mandy, lying back down and setting her letter on her bedside table. "I shouldn't have been so nosy."

"It's all right, you were fine. Leave it up to you to instantly sense when something's up with me." I laughed.

"Yeah, I know you too well, I guess. And if I wasn't being nosy, that means I can ask again, right?" She grinned.

Since she continued to ask, and stared at me, I relented, although I was sure I was being a terrible friend by doing so. "Fine, but if you don't like it you can't get angry with me, you just spent five minutes begging me to tell you… I overheard James and Sirius talking, apparently James thinks that Sirius likes me. Silly, isn't it?"

"Oh," said Mandy after a second's pause. She looked entirely unsurprised. "Well, yeah, I reckon he does."

"What? You never said anything before." All my guilt at wanting to keep it a secret evaporated, as it was evident she'd known for a while and not told me. Although as I said it, I realized I wouldn't really have wanted her to tell me – I hadn't even wanted to hear it from Sirius.

"I tried to tell you, didn't I? When the parchment said those things. You were too preoccupied about Luke anyway, so I didn't try that hard."

It was still entirely probable that Mandy was reading too far into it; she had a tendency to see things that didn't exist. In fifth year she'd been convinced that Bertram Aubrey was flirting with her, because he smiled at her once. So I took Mandy's words with a grain of salt.

"Stop _grinning_ ," I said. "It's like you're laughing at my confusion. Shouldn't you be more upset by this? I mean, you had a crush on him for so long."

Mandy shrugged. "But that's so far in the past now, who cares? I have Francis now."

"Oh?"

"Well, not really. But I think we have potential. He seemed happy when I congratulated him on Hufflepuff's win in the last Quidditch match."


	19. Finals and Farewells

A few days later, Mandy and I went flying around the grounds after classes as a break from our now constant studying for exams. Out on the pitch, the Ravenclaw Quidditch team was practicing for their match on Saturday against Gryffindor, which would decide the Quidditch Cup. Mandy and I went around near the lake, but far enough away from where people normally lay out in the grass, so that we wouldn't be watched.

The one downside to flying with Mandy was that she was using an old school broom, which was a lot slower than mine. Several times I noticed I was slowing down, and turned around to find Mandy holding on to the tail of my broom, laughing. Eventually she said we could either trade brooms or she would keep holding on to my broom, so I consented to switch for a little while (and I held on to the tail of her broom this time to show her how annoying she was).

"Do you remember when James was flying through the hallway on two brooms?" I asked Mandy, as we touched down on the grass.

"Yeah, I saw him going by," she said. "It was like skiing in the air."

"Skiing? That Muggle sport where they race down hills on sticks?"

Mandy laughed. "Yes, although I promise it's more interesting than that."

"I'm going to try," I said suddenly, then glanced around, hoping no one was watching.

"You're going to try what James was doing? Standing on two brooms?"

"Yeah," I said, as I positioned one foot on each broom. I took off, and as I was going slowly enough, Mandy's broom wasn't any worse than mine. I had my arms out to either side and was sort of hunched over, but I was doing it!

"Go faster!" shouted Mandy. "And you're only three feet above the ground, that's lame."

I started going faster, lost my balance, and tumbled off the brooms, which sailed on another few feet and then landed. Mandy ran over to me, beside herself with laughter. "I hope you're okay," she said, "because I can't stop laughing."

I rolled over. "Why did I do this again?" I asked, massaging my head.

"I don't know," she agreed. "You need a professional to show you how it's done… like me." She picked up my broom and stood on it.

"No, you have to do it with two brooms!"

"Are you kidding? The school one's terrible. Anyway, I'm demonstrating surfing, not skiing."

I raised my eyebrows. Mandy grinned. "To you, it's a Muggle sport where they stand on a board on the water." She took off, and lasted a lot longer standing on the broom than I did.

"Thank you, thank you," she said, bowing to her imaginary audience as she got off the broom.

"Show-off," I said, but I was smiling. After about a quarter of an hour practicing standing on the broom, we gave up and started to head back inside.

As we passed by the Quidditch pitch, Ravenclaw's team came out, having just finished their practice. There was nowhere to hide from Luke so I decided I'd finally just deal with it. When we reached the castle, the team split up to walk their separate ways, and Luke came over to me and Mandy.

Luke greeted us politely and asked us how we were doing, then told me, "I haven't seen you in ages!"

"Yeah, err… I've been really busy studying for exams." It might have been a reasonable excuse if he hadn't seen me wandering over the grounds with my broom. But I couldn't say anything rude to him – he didn't deserve that. He was too nice. However, I still didn't particularly want to speak with him.

"Yeah, those are really soon, but they'll be over soon enough."

"How's your Quidditch team doing? Are you set for the final game this weekend?" Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mandy start walking away.

"Pretty well. Potter's got a good team though, it'll be tough, but you never know."

"Good luck," I said.

"Thanks. Listen, I'm sorry if it seemed like I was avoiding you forever after we broke up. I hope we can just put that behind us and be friends again."

"You were avoiding me?" I laughed with relief, and then admitted, "Really, don't feel bad about it, I was avoiding you too."

We laughed at how ridiculous we had been, and then told me he should go. I turned to go back to the Slytherin common room and felt a great weight lift from my shoulders. I was actually glad I'd stopped to talk with him, and gotten closure. Enough time had passed since our relationship ended that I thought it would be fine between us now – the days when I was always trying to impress him and the time when we were dating seemed so long ago. I couldn't care less now. And it seemed he was over it as well.

* * *

As it turned out, Gryffindor beat Ravenclaw in the last Quidditch game, so they won the Quidditch Cup. They'd had it for years, so I wasn't surprised, but I thought it was long since time for another house to have it.

Exams began in two days, so I spent literally the entire weekend in the library. I'd staked out a table for myself in a corner and spread books all over it, and I hardly ever left. I even slept there Saturday night, although that was unintentional; I'd simply fallen asleep and then woken up the following morning with my face stuck to my Charms book.

Mandy and Charlotte visited me on Sunday and asked if I was planning to move there permanently. But my biggest distraction came in the form of the four Gryffindor boys, who came into the library not to study, but to talk and use up my valuable time for last-minute studying. Well, Remus and Peter had come to collect some books, but I could not see any logical reason James and Sirius were there. They stopped by a table where some Gryffindors were studying, and then found my table.

I didn't look at them as they approached, hoping they'd get the hint and leave. I was unsuccessful, however; they both sat beside me at my table, and James actually moved some of my books off to the side, removing the giant wall of textbooks I had constructed.

"I heard you're planning to live in here," said James, as he put his feet up on the table in the space he had just cleared.

"I don't want to fail my exams," I reasoned, scowling at his feet. "I wasted time all last week, so I have to make up for it now."

"I assume you took a break yesterday to watch the finest Quidditch match of the year," said Sirius. He was leaning back in his chair too, his arm resting on the back of my chair.

"You came to my table to gloat about Gryffindor winning the Quidditch Cup?" I asked, amused. "Haven't you got anything better to do?"

Sirius grinned. "We've got all the time in the world. You're taking this much too seriously."

"Sixth-year exams don't even matter," James agreed. "It's next year we'll have to worry about."

I was about to tell them to leave when Remus and Peter joined us. "I'm glad you're finally taking a break, Melanie," said Remus, carrying an armful of textbooks. "From what I've heard, you haven't left the library for longer than an hour since yesterday afternoon!"

"That's not entirely true, I saw her at dinner yesterday," said Peter.

"I'm not taking any breaks, I need to read this entire book." I held up my Charms book and attempted to hide behind it again.

"You don't need to study for Charms, you have enough charm as it is," said Sirius.

I rolled my eyes. "What, have you been getting lessons from James on cheesy one-liners?"

James made a noise in protest, and Sirius asked, "It wasn't _that_ bad, was it?"

"Well, thanks for visiting, but I really am trying to study." I looked back at my textbook. Sirius's arm moved from the back of my chair to my shoulder, and I shrugged it off immediately. James cleared his throat loudly.

"Are you flirting with me?" I asked Sirius incredulously, my mind suddenly replaying that conversation I'd heard between Sirius and James.

"Yep," said Sirius. "But I do this to all my friends, see?" He slung his other arm around James's shoulders, and ruffled his hair for good measure. Then he laughed at me.

"Find someone else to annoy," I suggested.

Sirius yawned. "You're no fun."

I began moving my textbooks back around me like a bulwark, and retreated to my studying. Remus got James and Sirius to leave with him, and I mouthed "Thank you" to him as they walked off. He waved with the hand that was not carrying six books, and they disappeared out the door.

I watched them go with mild irritation, not even entirely sure why this visit bothered me so much. Slowly, an unwelcome thought came to me… was I actually _disappointed_ that Sirius wasn't really flirting with me?

Sighing, I bent down over my book again and continued reading about the _Aguamenti_ charm.

* * *

True to my word, I spent the remainder of the weekend in the library, although I finally left my post at my table Sunday night, and slept in my bed. I woke up early on Monday, crammed for Ancient Runes, and then went off to take the exam. It went well; although I was sure I mistranslated a few sentences, I didn't want to look them up afterwards to check. It was better to not think about it.

I ran into Charlotte that afternoon, and I hadn't actually seen her for most of the weekend, as I'd been in my self-imposed isolation in the library. "Oh, who are you? Do you live here?" she asked as I walked into the common room.

"Your sense of humor astonishes me," I said, sitting beside her on the sofa. "How were your exams today?"

"Oh, fine… I had Divination after lunch though, and it was complete rubbish. I ended up predicting my own imminent death – that's what I saw in the cards – and then Professor Sage got all emotional and said she'd seen it coming since my first day of class, and was so proud of my Seeing ability."

"I've been telling you for ages that class was worthless."

"Yeah, she's about a hundred years old; she might have lost her touch. Hector reckons he'd drop the class if he could, but we did sign up to continue it when we took it this year…"

"I feel that way about Potions. But it's probably important for getting most jobs."

The door of the common room opened and Alanna walked in, her nose in a book, and she walked through to the staircase without looking at anyone. Mandy was behind her, and when she saw Charlotte and me, she came over to join us. "That was you over the weekend," Mandy told me, gesturing to Alanna, who was now walking up the stairs and still not looking where she was going.

I rolled my eyes. "I wasn't that bad; I didn't bring my books with me when I left the library."

"That's because you didn't leave the library," said Charlotte.

"You two think you're so funny, but at least _I'm_ going to pass Charms tomorrow."

The Charms exam wasn't too bad; I felt adequately prepared, and my demonstration of the Aguamenti charm was practically flawless. I didn't let up my rigor in studying until the end of the final exam, which was Herbology; after it finished, I sped outside of the greenhouse and yelled gleefully. Mandy followed, her arms in the air, and we raced each other all the way across the grounds to the lake, where, out of breath, we peeled off shoes and socks and splashed around, knee-deep in the water, at least until a tentacle of the Giant Squid brushed Mandy's leg and she shrieked and jumped. As she started to fall, she grabbed my arm as well and we both toppled into the lake with a splash. Completely soaked but in high spirits, we laughed about it all the way back to the Slytherin common room, where we changed into dry clothes and joined our roommates in playing music and celebrating the end of exams.

* * *

Before we knew it, we were walking down to the horseless carriages that would take us to the Hogwarts Express and home for the summer. And the next time we'd be back, it would be the last year at Hogwarts – the last year we didn't have to worry about jobs, the last year we could still be carefree kids, the last year we were still really protected from Voldemort. After that, who knew?

Mandy, Charlotte and I approached an empty carriage. As Charlotte got in, I looked back at the castle, and then at the front of the carriage. I had never really thought anything of it before, but now I knew it was actually pulled by a thestral. I reached out to touch the thestral I knew was there but could not see. I eventually found it; I wasn't sure whether it felt silky or scaly or both. It was very weird.

"Mel, are you coming?" asked Mandy's voice from inside the carriage.

"Yeah," I said, stepping back from the invisible thestral and hopping into the carriage beside my friends. We watched Hogwarts disappear out of sight out the window, and then started discussing how old we felt as we just had one year left. On the train the three of us found a compartment together with Hector and Russell. We passed the time by sharing our various plans (or lack thereof) for the summer, and then made plans to all meet up and see the Hobgoblins concert in July.

The train ride back to King's Cross was, as always, too short. As the Hogwarts Express puffed slowly into the station, on board the train was a flurry of activity as people said their last-minute goodbyes for the summer and got their belongings in order.

I lugged my trunk out of the compartment and into the hallway. Several doors away I saw Mulciber talking to Mark and his surly dark haired friend, whose name I had finally learned was Camilla. I wondered vaguely if Mulciber was trying to recruit first years to be Death Eaters.

My thoughts were interrupted when someone bumped into me, causing me to drop Mercury's cage, and he screeched. Vanessa Saltz brushed past and said, "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry you were taking up the entire doorway. I didn't mean to bump into you." Before I could do anything, she continued walking and pushed through another doorway just as Althea Seward was trying to walk through; Althea timidly stepped back. I picked up Mercury's cage and stared after Vanessa, while Hector, who had left the compartment after me, called her a few choice words under his breath.

I dragged my stuff out and walked toward the door. "Hey," I said to Althea. She just smiled in response. "Don't let her push you around, you've got to stand up for yourself!" I said.

"She doesn't upset me. I'm in no hurry, it'll only take me about three more seconds to get off the train." Althea smiled at me, then continued fussing with her trunk, and Hector saw her and went to help. He tried to make conversation, but she just stared at her feet as he took the trunk from her and was too shy to say anything but "thank you."

As we all stepped off the train, the goodbye hugs continued as people went off to find their families, and the platform was full of the sounds of people excitedly talking, and of owls hooting and cats meowing. I wished Althea a good summer, hugged Hector and then Charlotte before they went off to greet their families, and then found Mandy again and we waited as long as possible to leave each other.

I saw the Gryffindors near the other end of the platform. James was speaking to someone who must have been his father – he looked just like James, only much older. I met Sirius's eyes as I was looking over, and he grinned and waved. I waved back at him, and Mandy nudged me hard in the ribs.

"Ouch! I was just waving," I said to her. "I'm not going to say goodbye to _you_ then, if you're just going to punch me!"

She laughed, and gave me a hug. "I see my parents, so I should get going," she said. "And I think I see yours, too." I turned around, and sure enough, there were Mandy's parents. Her father was grinning and looking around at all the students filing off the train with owls and trunks and broomsticks in hand. It seemed that it never got old for him, even after the many times he had come to drop off or pick up Mandy at the station. My father was standing a few feet away, watching him with unease.

Mandy's parents came up and hugged her; we talked for a few minutes and then as she started to walk away with them she turned back to tell me, "I'll see you sometime this summer – I'll write to you!"

"Okay! Bye Mandy!" I said, waving.

Finally I turned to meet my own parents, who were by now probably tired of waiting for me. Dad stopped glaring at Mandy's father and smiled at me. "It's good to have you back home."

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for reading! If you have the time I'd love a review – they really make my day, even if it's only a short one, or what your favourite food is, or an answer to this riddle:** ** _What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?_**


	20. Over the Edge

When we got back home in Cheshire, I lugged my stuff upstairs and into my room. My room was exactly how it had been when I'd left last summer, except perhaps everything had a bit more dust on it and Mum had been storing a few boxes in here. I could see the corner of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ sticking out from under the bed – I'd been wondering what had happened to that book for ages.

I set Mercury's cage on top of my trunk, and he hooted and clicked his beak, reminding me that he'd been in his cage all day and must want to fly around a bit. Once I opened his cage, he flapped around my room until I'd got the window open, and then he soared off. My trunk continued to sit in the middle of my floor; I was far too tired to consider unpacking it at the moment.

I eventually walked downstairs to get some food. Mum was in the kitchen, a few of her carpentry tools and a half-built birdhouse lying on the wooden table, and Dad was in the adjoining living room reading the newspaper. "It's good to have you back," Mum said as I walked in, giving me a tight hug. "Have you got all your stuff unpacked yet? I don't want you leaving your clothes all over the floor like you did last summer."

"Er, not quite," I admitted. "Almost." Overstatement of the century… It was fortunate Mum wasn't very good at Legilimency.

"Nathan's at work, but he should be home soon," said Mum. "I know he's missed you too. He's been promoted at work, he's doing so well. We're so proud of him."

"Any idea yet what you want to do after Hogwarts?" Dad asked, shaking his newspaper to get a large fly off of it.

"I want to do research into how magic works," I said. "An Unspeakable, I guess."

Dad started to rattle off some other potential careers, but Mum cut him off. "We'll have time for that later. Melanie, I was about to start making scones to welcome you home! I've even got currants."

I grinned. The fly continued to buzz around Dad's head, and he looked up from the newspaper and pointed his wand at the fly. " _Avada Kedavra_ ," he said casually, and the fly dropped dead on the arm of the sofa. He flicked his wand and the fly sailed over into the rubbish bin on the other side of the room.

"Conway, I wish you wouldn't do that in the house," said Mum. "What if Melanie had been standing over there?"

"Sorry, dear."

When I heard the sound of the front door opening, I ran into the hallway to find Nathan there; I grinned and ran to greet him. "Hey!" I said excitedly.

"You're back!" he said, smiling and hugging me. "Hope the train ride home wasn't too long."

"Not too bad, how was work?"

"Great, although exhausting. They made me go in on a Saturday! I never thought I'd be jealous of Dad's job, but he never has to work weekends."

Dad worked at a small company that made cauldrons, and could basically take time off whenever he wanted.

"Well, you _are_ in the Ministry, you signed up for hard work!" I said.

"They didn't say that explicitly in my job description."

I laughed. Nathan was just the same as he had ever been. How could I have suspected him of being on the other side? I'd freaked myself out over nothing, and then our minimal communication during the year hadn't helped. I was really glad to see him again.

The following day Nathan and I played Quidditch. Each of us was simultaneously Chaser, Beater and Keeper. So when Nathan had the Quaffle, depending on where he was on the field, I had to either hit the Bludger at him (we were only using one), or block the goal hoop. We didn't use a Snitch – we simply finished when we got tired of playing three Quidditch team positions.

Nathan had work again on Monday, which meant it was just me home alone with my parents. Dad and I would sometimes try to put chirping charms on Mum's birdhouse, or Mum would teach me how to cook. But in the past few years things had started to get odd with them; they'd expressed mild dislike of Muggles, and their offhand comments about the war became more critical of the side resisting Voldemort. It made me uneasy. Last summer I had spent a lot more time in the garden, and actually managed to keep most of my vegetables alive – at least, the ones that weren't eaten by slugs.

So when Nathan left for work, I went into nearby Liverpool, aimlessly strolling through the Muggle part of town. Eventually I walked into a music shop, where I tried to play some chords on a guitar. It reminded me of those carefree days when Archie Summerby and I would sing and play music together with his fellow Hufflepuffs. I tried to recall some of the chords he'd taught me, but it had been over a year since then. Last I'd heard from him, he was in Peru.

Guitars were expensive, and I didn't have Muggle money anyway. But Rachel had said the tin whistle wasn't too hard, so I contemplated learning how to play an instrument over the summer.

Other than on the weekends, Nathan wasn't around much, because he worked during the week, and then after work would usually spend time with Lucius Malfoy and his other friends. So I spent a lot of time at that guitar shop, and at home sometimes I attempted painting, and at other times tended to the tomatoes and courgettes in my small patch of garden behind the house. I also browsed through my parents' small library for any information on the science of magic, as that spark that had arisen during one Ancient Runes assignment had not yet faded. But I couldn't find much.

One day I received an owl from Mandy asking me to go see _Star Wars_ with her. I laughed aloud; I could just imagine Mr Macintosh had talked about it so often that Mandy had finally told him she'd go.

I wrote back to her and we planned out when and where to meet, so the next day I was about to leave when Mum stopped me. "Where are you going?" she asked suspiciously.

"London," I said.

"What for?"

"I'm meeting a friend." I couldn't tell her I was going to see Mandy; neither of my parents liked her; they thought her very low-class. Besides, the two of us were about to go into a Muggle cinema and watch a Muggle film, something they would probably not approve of.

"Who? When will you be back? Why are you dressed like that? You look like a Muggle!"

"I'll be back in a few hours, and I dressed like this because obviously I can't run around looking like a witch when there are Muggles around!"

She didn't look pleased, but said, "Have a good time. And be careful out there in the city."

"Thanks." I grabbed a handful of Floo Powder, threw it into the fireplace, and said, "The Leaky Cauldron!"

I appeared in the fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron and met Mandy who had Apparated there, and then we left and went out into Muggle London. We got ice cream at a shop, which was an interesting venture because I tried to pay with a Sickle and the woman at the shop just stared at me until Mandy saw what had happened and pulled out her Muggle money. She told the woman I was foreign, and paid for my ice cream. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid as to try to use my wizarding money – I just hadn't thought at all about it.

After this minor mishap, we spent a while pretending to be Muggles, and as usual discussed typical Muggle things like airplanes and dishwashing machines as we walked to the cinema.

We both enjoyed the film. Muggle technology never ceased to amaze me – the wizarding world didn't have anything quite like the movies! As we left, Mandy and I discussed when would be best for me to stay with her at her house. I didn't know how I'd run it by my parents without them instantly saying no, but I'd deal with that later. We decided that I'd go over in a couple of weeks, which would hopefully give me enough time to convince my parents.

* * *

One day at the beginning of July I was sitting on the sofa, skimming through the _Daily Prophet_ , and saw an article called "Death Eaters Identified," written by Leonora Macintosh – Mandy's mum. The article discussed how people should take extra care to make sure their friends and family were not under the Imperius curse, and how your seemingly friendly coworker could be a Death Eater and you might not even know it. It even listed, as exclusive new information, a few Death Eaters by name, and I saw Henry Avery on the list: Charlotte's father. Most of the other names I didn't know, although there were a few Dad had mentioned as people he knew and liked.

"Are you reading the rubbish that woman wrote about Death Eaters?" Dad asked, noticing me reading the paper.

"Yeah, I'm reading it." I refrained from divulging any opinions about it – every time I went home, it seemed things got a little more intense. It was obvious to me now: Dad was clearly not ambivalent about the war anymore. And the worst part was that I wasn't ambivalent either. We had both picked sides now – opposite sides.

"That woman is terrible," said Dad. "She has no idea what she's talking about, and clearly doesn't understand anything about the Death Eaters. She has no business writing any of that."

"Hmm," I said noncommittally, and turned the page. The next article was a detailed and dramatic account of the private life of the didgeridoo player in the Hobgoblins, and my eyes drifted over the page without actually reading anything.

It dawned on me that the way I acted with my family mirrored the way Althea reacted to bullies like Vanessa. But unlike her situation, the problem wouldn't go away if I ignored it – the problem was my own family. I didn't know how to stand up for myself in this case, because I didn't know what was right; I was afraid of what would happen if they realised, as I had, that we were truly on opposite sides. But it couldn't last forever this way with the war only getting more intense; at some point, I would need to stand up for myself.

* * *

Nathan was at home the following day. As I was eating breakfast, he walked into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing his eyes – he had clearly just tumbled out of bed. "Morning," he yawned, and walked over to a cabinet, reached up and got a bowl. I saw a dark shape on his left wrist peeking out from underneath his sleeve; Nathan had apparently started his teenage rebellion years a bit late and gotten a tattoo. He saw me staring at it and moved his arm so I couldn't see it anymore. I rolled my eyes. "Where are the cornflakes?" he asked.

"They're out on the table," I said. He was very clearly still asleep. "What are you up to today – after you've actually woken up, that is?"

"Let's play Quidditch," he suggested, coming over to the table and pouring cornflakes into the bowl.

"Sure! I'm totally going to win because you're asleep."

After I finished breakfast, I brought my broom downstairs and leaned it against the wall in the front hallway. I read the _Daily Prophet_ while I waited for Nathan, and he took his time, writing a letter to someone after he had finished eating. " _I'm_ going to fall asleep if you keep writing that letter," I told him eventually. "It's got to be the length of a novel by now."

He laughed. "Yeah, I'm just about finished," he said, and walked into the front hallway to get his owl, Bellona, whose cage was on a shelf just off the entryway. As he tied the letter onto her leg, I got a better look at his wrist. I could only see half of the design, but it looked eerily familiar… I grabbed his wrist and yanked the sleeve up, exposing the black outline of a skull and snake.

Nathan let go of his owl and drew his arm away from me sharply. Bellona screeched and flapped around our heads, but I ignored her.

"What is that, Nathan?" I asked, nonplussed. "You decided to get a tattoo of the Dark Mark? You-Know-Who's symbol? What the hell is that all about?"

"It's nothing," he said, tugging his sleeve back down.

"You're trying to show your support for Voldemort?"

"I told you, it's nothing," he insisted. "Did you get your broom yet? We were going to play Quidditch."

I wasn't about to let him change the topic so quickly. "Nathan, are you a Death Eater?" He didn't even have to respond; the instant I asked it, I knew. I closed my eyes in horror, and turned away, speechless.

I couldn't believe it. I thought I knew him. My own brother, whom I had been so close to when we were growing up, whom I'd always looked up to, was now a Death Eater. He was the one who'd encouraged me to stand up for my beliefs – and here he was doing the same thing, but it was to support Voldemort. I felt like he'd personally betrayed me. How long had this been going on?

"Melanie, what's wrong?" His voice faltered.

I stared back at him. What kind of question was that? "What's bloody _wrong?_ " I repeated hysterically. "You're working for Voldemort!"

Nathan flinched. "Look, I—"

I laughed mirthlessly, interrupting him. I didn't care what he had to say – whatever explanation he had, it was never going to be enough. "Don't want to hear his name, huh? He's _The Dark Lord_ to you? Voldemort Voldemort Voldemort."

The commotion drew my parents from the living room into the hallway, but I just kept talking. "All this time you've been telling me about your Ministry job, but you just failed to mention that in your spare time you've been running around killing innocent people!"

My voice remained surprisingly steady and cold, but my eyes prickled with tears. I turned to face my parents and finally let loose on my family words I didn't even know I had. "Why did you have to pick a side? We would all be better off if we stayed out of it! But over these past few years you've become strangers to me, following Voldemort!" I cried. "And you only support him because you're afraid not to! He just wants power for himself, he doesn't give a damn about anyone else!"

I had never been so rude to him before – I couldn't believe what I was saying. But it was all coming out now; I was past the point of no return.

Dad's face turned a dark maroon colour, and I took a few steps up the staircase away from him. He grabbed my Cleansweep from where it leant against the wall, and then threw it forcefully onto the floor.

"NOW YOU LISTEN TO ME!" he shouted. "Your brother was good enough to tell us about the Dark Lord, who we've come to respect; he has power you can't even dream of! Nathan is doing great things and making changes in the world, while you just hang around at Muggle cinemas with your disappointing, common Mudblood friends."

"Granddad Omar and Grandmum Astrid are both Muggle-born, and some of the nicest people I know!" I argued defensively. "What do you have against Muggle-borns, but you support all the violence Nathan's getting involved in?"

"You want to talk about violence?" Dad asked. "You weren't alive then, but the Muggles put us through hell in the forties, with their bombs and their bloodshed, killing off thousands of innocents who had nothing to do with their politics and war. My best friend died when the Muggles bombed his town. And _that_ is the side you're supporting now."

I kept silent this time. My parents ignored me as they began to argue, while Nathan's owl Bellona continued to flap around the room and screech, angry that she had been forgotten with a letter tied on to her foot. I couldn't believe Nathan; he was the reason my parents had stopped ignoring the war and had joined the support of the other side. I missed a lot when I was away at school.

"Stop it," Mum insisted. "I know we can't all agree, but she's our _daughter_ , Conway! You're both being unreasonable! Melanie, why did you bring this up at all?"

Even Nathan didn't come to my defense. I started to edge back up the stairs again as Dad paced agitatedly, ranting about how my foolish perspective was splitting up the family… When I'd run back up the rest of the stairs to the top landing, I heard Mum's voice call, "Not so fast!"

I paused reluctantly, and she came around the corner into view. "Come back down here, this isn't finished," Mum insisted as I walked slowly back down the stairs, clutching the railing so tightly my knuckles were white. "While you're here this summer," she said, "I don't want to hear another word about politics, it's important work Nathan is doing for the Dark Lord, and he'll be rewarded for it. You should be proud of your brother! Let us know when you've come around. And yes, Conway, that means no politics from you either. We simply won't discuss it."

"Karima, it's not that simple," Dad told Mum, and I agreed with him for once.

"We can't stay quiet forever," I said. "This is only going to get worse, and you know it. The war is nowhere near over; it won't just go away if we ignore it."

"Just stay out of it!" Mum insisted.

"No," I said quietly.

Dad pointed his wand at the front door, which swung open with a bang. It crashed into the wall and knocked a picture onto the floor. The frame shattered and the subject of the painting screeched and ran out of sight in the frame to take refuge in another painting down the hall. "There you go. You're so keen to disassociate yourself from us, then leave!" he cried.

I looked at Mum and Dad, and then over at Nathan, who refused to meet my eyes. How much I wanted to say to him, to all of them, that would not mean anything anymore. As I stood there, completely at a loss for what to do and feeling more alone than I even thought possible, a loud _crack_ interrupted the tense moment. I turned around, and there was Mandy, her face red and blotchy, and her arms wildly reaching out at the banister. Mum, her head surprisingly clear, reached out to steady Mandy. It was then that I realised Mandy was balanced on her right leg; half her left one was missing.

" _What happened?_ " I gasped, staring at her bloody stump of a leg. "Where's your leg? What are you doing here?"

"Death Eaters," she sobbed. "There's – someone attacked – everything's destroyed – Death Eaters…"

My own family problems, which five minutes ago I had thought were going to ruin my whole summer, were trivial compared to whatever had happened to Mandy. She was shaking violently. "What happened, Mandy? Did Death Eaters attack you? Is that why your leg is missing?"

She shook her head. "I wasn't attacked – I think I – I Splinched myself… b-but my parents are gone, I don't… I don't know what happened…"

"Okay… Are the Death Eaters gone? Should we go to your house?" I looked at her for a response, and she nodded dazedly.

"But we're not Apparating. I can't…"

"Don't go to her house, she needs to go to St. Mungo's. She's in shock," said Dad flatly. I had forgotten he was still there.

"I'll bring you there," said Nathan. But he was a Death Eater, part of the same group who had put Mandy in this state in the first place.

Mandy protested feebly. "No… my house first. I Splinched myself."

I took this to mean that the rest of her leg was still at her house. "Just hold on to my arm," I told her, "I'll bring you by Side-Along-Apparition." I held on to her tightly, and then, taking a deep breath, summoned my trunk and owl cage downstairs; at that moment I knew I wouldn't be returning to the house for the summer. Mandy needed someone – she'd come to me for help, and whatever happened I would be with her, but there was no way we could stay at my house when a Death Eater lived there too, not after what had happened to her. Home was a place where I felt the full effects of the war suffocating me, and it was too much. I couldn't face it alone, not like this, me against my family. Dad had told me to leave, and I took the request seriously.

As my belongings whizzed down the stairs, Mum watched warily. "You're leaving?" she asked, and I nodded. She frowned, but then let Mercury out of his cage, and put a Shrinking Charm on the empty owl cage and my broomstick so she could consolidate everything into my trunk for me. Mercury flew out the door – he'd find me eventually.

"Th – thanks, Mum," I stuttered, overcome with guilt as Mum gave me a hug. I didn't know what was the right thing to do anymore. I couldn't stay here afraid and miserable all summer and subjecting my best friend to it too, but Mum really was trying. I was the worst daughter.

"If you need to go to her house, you have to Apparate us, Melanie," said Dad gruffly. "I don't know where it is. But I can get you to St Mungo's after."

I didn't want to have to rely on them, but accepting help from my family was perhaps the only way to make sure Mandy would be okay. So I nodded. "Thank you." And with my trunk in one hand, Mandy's hand in the other, and Dad's hand gripping my arm, I spun and Apparated us away.

The scene that met my eyes was worse than I could have imagined. It was no wonder Mandy had Splinched herself; she had been too distraught to think clearly. Mandy's beautiful, perfect house was reduced to piles of ashes, still smouldering. The big tree in her garden that we had loved to sit under was lying on its side, uprooted and charred. The whole place was unrecognizable. I saw what looked like her dog lying amidst a pile of rubble, its legs sticking out at odd angles.

"Oh Merlin, Mandy, I'm so sorry," I whispered. She was no longer in hysterics, or even crying but she sat on my trunk and just stared blankly at the remains of her house, absently picking at the letters M.R.H. on the trunk. There were a million questions I wanted to ask her, but she wasn't in a state to answer questions or even speak at all. I wished I could do something as we simply watched the smoke continue to rise from the debris. As I stood there, my hand still on her arm, I spotted the other half of her leg in the garden.

I went over to pick it up, and carried it back to Mandy. She ignored it. Dad, who'd been standing awkwardly a few feet away from Mandy, approached us again. "You have to get that leg back on now," he said, and we spun away again, this time reappearing in front of an old, forgotten-looking department store called Purge and Dowse Ltd., on the corner of a street. In the window display were various dummies wearing outdated things.

"This is it," said Dad. I tried the cobwebby door, but it was locked, and Alohomora did nothing, but then I turned to see Dad speaking with one of the dummies behind the window. The dummy nodded and moved her hand as if beckoning us in, and with my other arm still supporting Mandy, we walked in through the window.

We were now in a clean looking reception area. The dummies had vanished, but in the center of the room was a desk, behind which an irritated-looking wizard sat in a chair. When we approached the desk I said very quickly, "My friend Splinched herself and her leg's come off and—"

"Fourth floor," the wizard grunted. "Read the sign," and then pointed to a sign, which I did not read because he had just told us where to go. I left my trunk in the lobby, and with Mandy's arm around my shoulder, we hobbled over to the lift. The Healers took Mandy into a room and I waited outside with Dad. They didn't take long to fix her leg, but I knew it would be a while before she would really be all right – after all, she'd been through quite a shock today.

"We didn't have time to finish that conversation," said Dad finally, as we stood outside the door to Mandy's room. "I know things got tense at home, but I hope you'll reconsider your decision to leave. You don't know what you're doing."

"No, I don't," I admitted. "But… we're on opposite sides now, can't you see that? I'm alone and I… I don't feel safe there. You saw what they did to Mandy. The same people Nathan's involved with. And Mandy doesn't have anywhere to go – she can't stay with us after that, so I'm going with her. She needs me right now."

Dad scowled, and for a second I thought he was going to say it was because of my poor choice in friends. But what he finally said was even worse to hear. "I've failed as a parent, then."

I stared at the floor, unable to speak due to the lump in my throat, and Dad finally said, "Why don't you stay with your grandparents? Your mum and I don't want to leave you two stranded. Omar and Astrid's flat is small, but they know the owners of the Leaky Cauldron personally, so I'm sure you'd be able to stay there free if nothing else. I'll tell them you're coming by."

"Okay," I said in a small voice. "Thank you."

He continued standing there for a moment, and as neither of us had any idea what else to say, he turned down the corridor and left. I remained there, crying and waiting for Mandy, wanting nothing more than to wake up and find out the day had all been nothing but a bad dream.

When Mandy came back out, with her leg reattached as good as new, I gave her a hug and we walked silently together back down to the reception area. We found my trunk again and we both sat on it, wondering where on earth to go from here.


	21. Why So Sirius

Mandy and I sat in the reception area of St. Mungo's for a while. Mandy stared at the floor and I kept looking around the room every now and then. Although the occasional Healer would come by and ask us if we had been helped yet, in general people just walked by and left us alone. Neither of us was in any hurry to get going – as if we had anywhere to go – and we really just needed to sit down for a while.

Eventually (I had no idea how much later), Mandy asked me, "Why do you have your trunk with you? What was going on at your house?"

"Erm… you Apparated in during a huge row," I explained. "Nathan joined the Death Eaters." I didn't go into the details; there'd be time for that later if she wanted to hear it, after we'd fully processed everything that had happened today.

She looked up at me, startled. "Really? I'm… I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to Apparate into the house, but I was…" She shook her head, and took a deep breath. "I had just come back from visiting my Muggle cousins for a few days, and I saw my house and looked around, I couldn't find my parents anywhere – everything was so destroyed, I have no idea where they were, or if they were in the house… I don't know if they're…" She stopped talking again, unable to continue, but I seized on the dim ray of hope in what she'd just said.

"Mandy, if they weren't there, they could have gotten away. They might be safe."

"You think so? I hope you're right…" She sighed. "What should we do now?"

I thought a moment. "I guess we should find somewhere to stay tonight… Do you think you'll go back to your cousins' place?"

"I don't know," she said. "They haven't heard yet… and I really don't want to have to explain everything to them, that'd be too much right now. Especially because they haven't any idea who Voldemort is… But I have nowhere else… What about you?"

"With my grandparents probably, or the inn at the Leaky Cauldron," I said. "And you'd be welcome there too, of course."

More than anything, Mandy just wanted peace and quiet, and some time alone. So we opted for visiting my grandparents, where Mandy wouldn't be questioned by her own relatives, but I couldn't help wondering what exactly Dad had already explained to them.

Of course, it was lovely to see my grandparents again, and the familiar scent of cinnamon and wood polish was comforting as we crossed the threshold into the flat, but I couldn't help wishing my visit were under better circumstances. From what I gathered, Mum and Dad had sent an owl about what had happened to Mandy and how the two of us needed a place to stay safe, but had mentioned nothing about the fight or Nathan's being a Death Eater.. It was probably best that way. Anyway, Granddad Omar and Grandmum Astrid set us up with a big room in the Leaky Cauldron, though we were able to have all our meals at their flat.

That night, I slept for probably about an hour, and I could hear Mandy in the other bed tossing and turning all night as well. It was a very long night.

The following morning an owl arrived at our window for Mandy. She took the letter, unrolled it, and said "It's from Charlotte!" I went over to read it.

 _Mandy,  
Can we meet today? There's something you need to know, I'd like to see you as soon as possible. It's good news. Can you meet me in the Leaky Cauldron this afternoon?  
Charlotte_

"I wonder what that's about," I said. "Lucky you're already at the Leaky Cauldron."

"Good news…" said Mandy. "Maybe she knows something. It doesn't seem like typical Charlotte gossip stories; she'd have written that out in the letter."

So at two in the afternoon we went downstairs to meet her. We waited about five minutes, and then she walked in, carrying a bag of oranges and already sporting an impressive summer tan. Although she'd said she had good news, she did not look happy.

"Hey," she greeted us as we walked to a table in the corner. We didn't bother with any small talk, and Charlotte got right to the point. "I heard about what happened, and… Mandy, your parents are still alive. I'm sure of it."

"How… how do you know?" she asked, wringing her hands under the table.

Charlotte sighed. "Well… please don't be angry with me… I know because my father was involved," she said quietly. "He saw what your mum wrote in the _Daily Prophet_ , he was furious about it. And his friend works at the Ministry and knew where your house was, so the next day they went over to destroy the house. Father came back angry because he said he didn't even get anyone. No one was there. So your parents are alive."

"But… I haven't heard anything from them," said Mandy.

"Maybe they don't think it's safe yet, because they're worried they're being tracked," I suggested. "Or they don't have a way to send you anything. It's been less than a day."

Mandy nodded slowly, and then looked back at Charlotte, who implored, "Don't hold this against me, I didn't even know he was doing it until after he came back!"

"I could never hold it against you," said Mandy. "It's not your fault. And you've just told me exactly what I needed to hear! They're all right!"

Charlotte nodded, and eventually looked over at me. "How come you're here too, Mel?" she asked. "I thought you'd be home."

I sighed and briefly explained what had happened, and how Nathan was a Death Eater.

She stared at me. "I'm sorry," she said, and then looked out the window as she continued to speak. "I know you had been close… And now you'll never be able to trust him anymore… Lester knew Father was going to your house, Mandy… and he knows you're my friend. And he did nothing about it."

"How can you stand being in that house with them?" I asked. "I couldn't last a day at my house when I found out."

"They're my family, Melanie," she said, turning back to look at us. "Sometimes I don't understand them, but I love them. I should probably be headed back now, I said I was going out to buy fruit and if I'm gone too much longer, Lester will probably figure out where I've gone. I just had to come and tell you. I'm really, really sorry, both of you. Keep in touch, let me know how you're doing…"

We said our quick goodbyes, and she hugged us briefly and walked out the door.

I continued staring at the door she'd just walked through, dazed. But Mandy was considerably more cheerful now that she knew her parents were still alive. "I'm so glad she came by," she said. "I don't know when I would have heard otherwise."

"Yeah," I agreed. "You've been through so much, I'm glad your parents are all right."

"I guess I just have to wait to hear from them…" she trailed off into thought. After a moment's silence, she said, "So I'll stay with you here until I hear something from my parents. Thank you, by the way, for helping me through this. It'll be all right."

* * *

Throughout the next week, Mandy and I continued living in our room above the Leaky Cauldron. I got a job at old Ferdinand Fortescue's ice cream parlor dishing ice cream for a few hours a day. He didn't really need another person working there so it wasn't much of a job, but it was at least something to do. And as for Mandy, she ended up helping out in the kitchen of the Leaky Cauldron, and with that we both had enough money to entertain ourselves in London. But it was a quiet life. When not working, we often passed the time in my grandparents' flat, listening to their stories about their travels, or telling them about our ambitions for after Hogwarts. I even discovered an old guitar that once belonged to Mum, so sometimes I played that.

After work one day in the middle of the week I went off to take the Apparition Test. I was pretty confident about it, considering I'd just successfully (albeit illegally) Apparated a few days ago to go to Mandy's house. I passed the test, and afterwards happily Apparated back into our room in the Leaky Cauldron to tell Mandy, if she was back yet.

Mandy had planned to go out into London that day and buy some new clothes. Most of hers had been destroyed along with her house, and as she didn't have any extra clothes with her, she'd been using mine instead, although they didn't fit well as she was rather short.

When I got back, however, she had already returned and was sitting on her bed with a piece of parchment in her hands. The parchment was flimsy and no longer folded; it looked like she'd been holding it all day. She looked up as I Apparated into the room. "You passed!" she cried. "Congratulations, I knew you would! And – look – I got a letter from my parents!"

"Great!" I said, hurrying over to look at the letter. "What did they say?"

"They said they hope I'm all right, and that they're fine, although obviously shaken up… they're currently out of the country, and worried they're being tracked, but they might be back by the end of the summer!"

Another owl drifted in, and at first I thought it might be another letter for Mandy, but then I realised it was Nathan's owl, Bellona. I hastily grabbed the letter off her leg and she swooped out the window again. Mercury, who had found us again a few days ago and was now back in his cage, clicked his beak in annoyance. Apparently, according to Mercury, just because I'd received a letter meant that he deserved Owl Treats, despite the fact that he had not been the one delivering the letter. I distractedly threw an Owl Treat at his cage as I unrolled Nathan's letter. I didn't really know what to expect when I started reading, but I couldn't even get through the whole thing.

 _Melanie,  
I don't know where you are, but I hope you're doing well. I miss having you around. I'm so sorry you got kicked out of the house, I reckon Dad feels awful about it. He's been really quiet and sad lately. But you have to understand this is what I've decided to do, and of course I haven't been killing anyone like you accused me of, I can't believe you'd suggest something like that. I'm proud of the work I'm doing to get wizards the respect they deserve and I wish you could see that. . ._ blah, blah. It went on for another paragraph or so, but I didn't bother with it. I crumpled the letter and threw it across the room.

"Only another month and a half," said Mandy, noticing me. "Then we're back at Hogwarts where everything is normal again."

But it wouldn't be normal, not until I got used to a new definition of normal. I got a letter from my parents a few days later, saying they loved me and they were worried about me, they hoped all was well with us in London, and if we wanted to come back, that Mandy was welcome to stay too. However, I didn't want to go home. I wanted my family to be whole again, but I knew nothing would have changed if I went back; we had crossed a line. Although I still believed there was enough good in Nathan to eventually turn his back on Voldemort, perhaps it would just take time, and I'd spend that time here in London. I was struggling, but I had Mandy's invaluable support, and the space to think with a clear head, and it meant the world.

* * *

One very hot afternoon two weeks later, I was dishing ice cream at the shop, and the queue extended way out the door as people wanted relief from the heat. It was almost the end of my shift and I was getting a bit tired, when I heard a very familiar voice.

"What's she doing here?"

Surprised, I looked up from the pumpkin ice cream I was dishing, and saw the speaker, the second person in line. It was James, and standing next to him was Sirius. I handed a large cone of ice cream to the girl at the counter, and then James and Sirius moved up.

Sirius grinned. "Well look at you, we just came to get ice cream and found something else sweet instead."

I rolled my eyes so exuberantly that I thought for a second that they'd get lost in the back of my skull. Honestly, if I spent any more time around Sirius, my eye muscles would suffer.

"What do _you_ want?" I asked.

"What does it look like, we're in line for ice cream, aren't we?"

"I didn't know you were working here," said James. "Do you get free ice cream?"

"Sometimes," I laughed. "Anyway, what kind of ice cream would you like, James?" Sirius started to say something, but I interrupted. "I know you _were_ next, Sirius, but because of your cheeky comments you'll have to wait now."

When I handed them their ice cream, they tried to get it for free, insisting that's what a good friend would do. "Isn't there at least a discount, like fifty percent off if you're a charismatic, great-looking bloke?" Sirius asked, and ran a hand through his hair in a dramatic manner.

I laughed. "Well there is, but you don't qualify."

They gave up and paid for their ice cream, and then left. I kept dishing ice cream, but my mind was not on my job; I kept staring out the window every so often to see if James and Sirius were still here in Diagon Alley. It was nice to see a friendly face, and I hoped they would still be around when I got off work in half an hour.

* * *

Half an hour later, when the queue for ice cream had mostly disappeared, I left work and went out into the street. I walked down to Gambol and Japes joke shop to see if Sirius and James were there; it seemed like a logical place for them to be, but they weren't there. With another brief unsuccessful stop into Quality Quidditch Supplies, I headed back to the Leaky Cauldron. They had probably left Diagon Alley by now.

But, lo and behold, when I entered the Leaky Cauldron I found Mandy, James and Sirius sitting at a table together, and I went over to join them.

"Mel!" cried Mandy, waving me over. "Look who I found!"

"I know, I saw them when I was at work. They tried to convince me to give them free ice cream!"

"Well it was worth a try," said James. "You never know unless you ask."

"What have you been up to all day?" I asked as I pulled over a chair and sat down.

"Just wandering around," said Sirius. "We met up with Remus and Peter this morning, and then each of them had stuff to go to in the middle of the afternoon so we just hung around. And then we ran into you."

James added, "And I'm glad we found you – Mandy told us what happened! I'm really sorry, both of you."

"It's all right," I mumbled.

"And she just said you've been staying in the Leaky Cauldron," James continued. "Do you two want to come stay at my house instead? There's loads of space – and you're my friends, you can't spend your whole summer dishing ice cream. You're supposed to enjoy summer."

"Er, well… I don't know," I said. That was a long time to stay – wouldn't they get tired of us? Would it be weird?

But at the same time, Mandy said, "Thanks, we'd love to."

I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to leave; I was comfortable staying with my grandparents and had no desire to be uprooted again. But Mandy told me that as much as she appreciated the hospitality of the past few weeks, familiar faces and friends her age were just what she needed now. So we told James that we'd have an answer in a bit, after we'd had time to decide and talk it over; James and Sirius said they'd stop by again in a few hours.

"One of Mandy's and my friends offered us another place to stay for the rest of the summer," I told Granddad when I went back to the flat. "She wants to go, you know, just to be around old friends and all that, but I really don't know. I don't want to sound ungrateful for how much you've helped us."

"Well, you can stay here as long as you need," he said. "And of course we'll understand if you decide to stay with friends your own age," he added with a laugh. "But remember you always have a home here. You can even bring that old guitar if you want. You sounded lovely, and of course no one's touched it since Karima left and married your father."

I doubted that my off-tune chords had been that pleasant, but I appreciated the open invitation to stay. "Thank you," I said. "I think… maybe I will go with Mandy, just because she's been through a hard time too and we want to stick together. But thank you so much, for everything."

"No need to thank us, it was a pleasure having you here," said Granddad, and then paused before starting again. "Your mother told me a bit more about what happened. I know you're probably angry with your parents, but I think they'll come round. They're both sensible people, just give it time."

So it was decided that Mandy and I would stay at James's house. I went back to the ice cream shop and let Mr. Fortescue know I was leaving for the summer, while Mandy talked to Sally at the Leaky Cauldron kitchen, and then before we left, we thanked my grandparents repeatedly, and I promised to write to them during the year and update them on how I was doing. Afterwards, Mandy and I went up to our room to get all our stuff out; it didn't take long to pack everything up again. As I packed the last few things in my trunk, I found the crumpled parchment that had been Nathan's letter to me.

When I thought about it, with Granddad's words echoing in my head, I couldn't really blame my parents for what had happened. They were just as hurt and confused as I was by this mess, and all they'd done was just believe Nathan, who was such a trustworthy and high-achieving person that it was difficult not to trust him. He'd always been my role model as a kid. No, I was angry at Nathan, and that was what hurt so much – seeing how flawed my childhood hero had become. I smoothed out the letter and looked at it again sadly, then put it in my suitcase.

So we went out to meet James and Sirius, who'd come back for us. "You two don't know where my house is," said James, "so let's just all hold on to each other." Together, with linked hands, we all disappeared.

We Apparated onto the front lawn of James's family's house. The house was huge and looked very well taken care of. James led us in, dragging my trunk behind him; I stared all around at the carved wooden door, the high-ceilinged entryway, the ornate rug… it was very elegant.

"Like it?" asked James, smirking. I realised he had been watching me, and I closed my mouth and stopped staring around, embarrassed.

I heard some footsteps and then a grey-haired woman appeared from a hallway, smiling and wearing a flour-dusted apron. "James, Sirius, you're back," she said warmly. "Did you have a good day in London?"

"Yeah," said James. "Mum, these are my friends from Hogwarts, Mandy and Melanie – we ran into them in Diagon Alley."

"It's nice to meet you," I said as I shook her hand.

"I'm glad to meet you too," she said. "Sorry about the flour on my hands, love."

"Is it okay if they stay here for the rest of the summer?" asked James. "In one of the upstairs rooms or something?"

"Oh… well… yes, of course, we have a guest room upstairs," she said, letting go from shaking Mandy's hand. "How about the end one on the upstairs hall."

"Okay," said James, and pointed his wand at my trunk and Mandy's bag. " _Locomotor Trunk_ ," he said, and indicated for Mandy and me to follow him up the stairs. We passed a few doorways and then at the last one, James opened the door and told us, "This one will be yours."

It was a spacious, sunny room with a large window, and I loved it immediately. James dropped off our belongings in the middle of the floor, while I walked over to the window and looked out at the sun above the neat hedgerow. When we all went back downstairs, Sirius was talking in low tones to Mr and Mrs Potter, who both looked surprised. Sirius saw us coming and finished speaking.

"Sirius just explained everything, I'm so sorry about what happened," said Mrs Potter sincerely as we reached the landing again. "Of course you can stay here as long as you like." She clasped my hand again in both of hers.

"Thanks, Mrs Potter," I said.

"Oh you don't need to call me that, it sounds so formal," said Mrs Potter, her hazel eyes twinkling as she laughed and let go of my hand. "Please just call me Euphemia."

"You're so kind to let us stay here, thank you so much," said Mandy.

"Not at all," said Euphemia. "Please make yourselves at home!" She turned to James, who was walking around the corner, and asked, with a look of amusement, "Aren't you going to show them around, James?"

"Oh, yeah," said James. "Well, this is the living room. And here's the kitchen…" He led us all around both levels of the house, with all high ceilings and carved bookshelves and framed paintings, and then when he pointed out the garage, Sirius insisted we go in. James laughed, and said, "They won't care about that."

"Sure they will," said Sirius. We followed him into the garage, which contained a nice-looking silver car that would never pass for a Muggle one. It looked classy but at the same time very obviously magical, and had all sorts of funny magical instruments on it. Along the outer wall of the garage were neat piles of old magical artefacts. And in the middle of the floor, surrounded by spanners and rags and all sorts of cleaning and maintenance tools, was a shiny black motorbike.

"Isn't it gorgeous?" asked Sirius. "A Muggle motorbike, I've wanted one my entire life and I finally got one."

"His pride and joy," said James. "He's spent so much time in here polishing it I've almost forgotten he's been here."

"It's nice," I said. I didn't know if that was true really – I knew nothing about motorcycles, and I'd certainly never refer to one as being gorgeous, but that was clearly what he wanted to hear.

"Anyway, that's that," said James as we walked back into the living room and met up with James's dad again. "You've seen pretty much everything now."

James's mum came in from the kitchen. "James, Sirius, why don't you come set the table for dinner."

"Do you need more help cooking?" I asked, as James and Sirius walked into the kitchen.

"Oh no dear, you don't have to, our house-elf Tibby has finished most of the cooking, and it'll only be a few more minutes anyway." She smiled and went back to the kitchen.

"So are you two in the same year at Hogwarts as James and Sirius are?" asked Mr. Potter.

"Yes… although, we're Slytherins," said Mandy.

Mr. Potter looked surprised, but interested. He then asked if either of us played Quidditch, and so we ended up talking about Quidditch for a few minutes – until James came out of the kitchen, a wooden spoon still in hand, and eagerly started throwing in his thoughts about Puddlemere United.

"James," his mum's voice called lightly from the kitchen.

James disappeared back into the kitchen, and Mr Potter said, "You probably hear enough about Quidditch from James at school, don't you? I shouldn't have brought it up." He laughed. "Did you read the _Daily Prophet_ story today about that witch who just invented the rocket stilts?"

"Fleamont, Melanie, Mandy… Dinner is in a few minutes," said Mrs Potter from in the doorway of the kitchen. We went in, where James was pointing his wand at a stack of plates moving towards the table, and Sirius was setting out cutlery. It was sort of a funny sight; I giggled as Sirius re-folded a napkin that had turned out messy, and went to help.

* * *

I was sitting on the sofa in the living room. We'd had an excellent dinner, and then sat around talking for a while, and now I was pretty sure I was the only one still downstairs, if not the only one still awake. Mandy had gone up to our room a little while ago, but I wasn't really tired. So I just sat there on the sofa, staring at the patterns on the rug, my arms wrapped around my knees (my mother had always told me it was rude to put my feet on the furniture, but right now no one was around to see it).

Away from the cheeriness of having everyone around, I had started thinking over everything that had happened. Somehow, being back in an environment with people all around, enjoying themselves and being friendly and supportive, emphasised what I'd lost. I knew the situation was beyond my control, but I couldn't help being upset about it.

It was so nice for James to have let us stay. His parents were the nicest people. I was jealous, wondering how my once-loving family that had turned sour and isolating, had developed a rift that was too deep to heal. _Why?_

I was interrupted from my solitude when I heard "All right?" and turned just as Sirius leapt over the back of the sofa and sat right next to me. "See, isn't this better than being at home? I might even let you test out my bike sometime… Maybe. It pays to get kicked out of the house, doesn't it?"

If he had said this to me when I wasn't already upset, I'd think nothing of it, but his timing could not have been worse. I turned away from him. "Sirius, you've never taken anything seriously in your life, everything is a joke for you, but this is _not_ funny. My brother is a Death Eater and my parents are on his side."

"Should I just leave you here to feel sorry for yourself?" he asked with a smirk.

I frowned. "Stop it. You couldn't even begin to understand." I hated that my voice was shaking, and I turned away from him to prevent him seeing the tears welling up in my eyes. This was the last thing I needed, for him to see me wretched and miserable, utterly at my worst.

There was a short silence, then he said, in an entirely different tone of voice, "Actually, I _do_ understand."

"Oh, please," I said. "You're a popular Gryffindor with a perfect life and a perfect family, so how could you possibly expect me to believe that?"

"Are you _joking?_ " Sirius asked slowly. "A perfect family? You do know who my family is, right?"

I had completely forgotten. As I had only ever known Sirius at Hogwarts, where he was a rebellious and proud Gryffindor, I never really associated Sirius with any of the rest of the Blacks. But his family did have a reputation for being uptight about blood purity, and no doubt he felt out of place there.

"They disowned me, you know," Sirius told me. "I ran away from home last summer."

"Oh… er… I'm sorry…" I was shocked – too surprised to continue trying to get him to leave. I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and turned to look at him. "Really? You ran away from home?"

"Yeah, that's why I'm living here."

"Oh – I thought you were just visiting."

He didn't respond, but shrugged and stood up as if he were about to leave. I was intrigued; he had never said anything before about running away from home. Somewhere behind the carefree side of him he displayed to everyone, he had gone through a lot, even if he tried to act like it wasn't a big deal. I prompted him by asking, "Were you disowned because you ran away?"

"Yes, I'm sure that was part of it," he said as he started to walk away. "But they probably would have done it anyway, they never cared about me… Well I'll leave you alone now."

"Wait," I said, aware that this was a complete reversal of five minutes ago; now it was me wanting to talk with him, and it seemed he didn't want to anymore. But I kept going anyway. "Why did you run away?"

He hesitated in the doorway uncomfortably, as if trying to decide whether to continue walking out of the room or to talk to me. I decided maybe it was a hopeless venture, because Sirius wasn't the type of person to open up about his feelings, so I said, "Never mind, it's all right if you don't want to tell me, I shouldn't have asked such a personal question."

"It's okay," he said, looking at me with an oddly calculating expression. Then he sat down again, this time at the other end of the sofa, and sat sideways on it so we were facing each other. "I just could never handle the lot of them. I'm the only person in my family to have become a Gryffindor, and my parents thought it was a huge disgrace to the family. They practically believe they're like royalty, being a pureblood family and all that, and they wanted me to act like it. But I didn't buy it."

"Wow," I said. "My parents didn't care about it all until recently, when they started to align with Voldemort, because Nathan convinced them, I think. And I realised I'd picked a side too, and it wasn't theirs. At first I tried to pretend it didn't bother me, to try to avoid a fight… but then I found out about Nathan, and I couldn't stand it anymore."

He nodded, and half-smiled. "I was the opposite, I wore my Gryffindor scarf all the time at home and made it so clear I wasn't like them. And they hated it. I wasn't the son they wanted me to be – I was only a disappointment to them, so they sort of gave up on me and ignored me most of the time, as if they forgot I existed. My mum always said Regulus was such a good son… the better son… and you've seen who his friends are, they're probably all Death Eaters in training."

"You think Regulus is going to become a Death Eater?"

"I don't know. He's been raised to think they're great… I've tried to talk to him sometimes, to stop him before he gets in too deep, but it always ends in fighting." His eyes took on a faraway, shuttered look, so I didn't push him further, but I had the feeling that it still bothered him more than he let on.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be. It was awful, but James' parents are wonderful, and I'm much happier here than I ever was at home."

I nodded. "My brother Nathan and I were really close, and now… I think that was the biggest shock for me. I don't know what to do anymore. It just hurts."

"Well, you're not alone," he said. He was being so sweet and caring – something I hadn't even thought he was capable of.

"Thanks," I said quietly. I sniffed and he looked up at me, and I wiped my eyes again. "Sorry," I mumbled.

"Come here," he said, and reached out his arm across the back of the sofa. I slid on over and when I was close enough he gave me a hug. I laughed weakly into his shoulder.

When he let go, he put his arm on the back of the sofa again, and I continued leaning against his shoulder. "I can't believe I just told you all that," he said, shaking his head. "I don't usually talk about it."

"Well I'm glad you did, I thought I was the only one…"

We weren't so different after all. Both of us had been alienated by our families, and now here we were, essentially homeless and living at James's house. We seemed to have formed an unspoken connection.

We sat there for a while. Sirius had his arm around my shoulders and we were sitting very close to each other, talking and joking; it was very comfortable and relaxed after I'd finally calmed down about everything. And it was nice that we were able to confide in one another – I admitted that I still missed my family, and he told me about his favourite cousin Andromeda, who had married a Muggleborn and set the family in uproar.

"So, I was wondering," Sirius asked eventually, "how did you end up in Slytherin?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing! Well, I was eleven and very impressionable, so I requested the house my family had been in. And I had the independence and resourcefulness and disregard for rules and Merlin knows what else the hat sees in Slytherins. Oh and speaking of Merlin, he was a Slytherin. It's not that bad, you know, most Slytherins are fine – we just have a bad reputation because of the ones like Mulciber." I shrugged. "It's just a label anyway. I think there's a little of each of the houses in everyone, though, don't you?"

"Don't forget Voldemort, he was a Slytherin too," said Sirius with a smirk. I rolled my eyes. "Don't get me wrong," Sirius continued, "nothing against Slytherins in general, I'm glad you're happy with it. Personally, I think Gryffindor's got one up on Slytherin because lions are so much more impressive than snakes, and Gryffindors are just cooler... well, I suppose Merlin is all right… but yeah, I guess you could be right, it's a label."

I snorted. "Remind me again why we're friends?"

* * *

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **Disclaimer: The chapter title is a pun on the Joker's line in** ** _ **The** Dark Knight_** **, owned by WB/Legendary Pictures/DC Comics.**


	22. Communication Breakdown

Sirius and I ended up talking until half past two in the morning before we realized what time it was. I felt so much better about my family situation, and was so glad Sirius had taken the time to talk with me – here was someone else going through a similar thing, and that made it so much easier to bear. After discussing our families, our conversation had drifted to more pleasant topics and continued for a while; I told him my greatest weakness (rhubarb crumble), and he revealed his greatest secret (he didn't like chocolate). We were quite surprised to look at the clock and discover the time!

The days that followed were among the best of my entire summer – or in fact any of my summers at home since I started at Hogwarts. It was exactly how summer was supposed to be. Sirius, with an insatiable craving for excitement, often convinced us all to do absurd things he considered fun, including setting up a large water slide from the roof of James' house, or hitchhiking with Muggles and then trying to find our way back. We also played Quidditch, and Mandy tried to teach us some Muggle sports and games, although the Monopoly board she made in order to try and teach us ended up being a waste of her time, because the game took forever and the other three of us tired of it very quickly. After attempting for a few minutes to get us to stop charming the pieces to attack each other, she finally gave up.

We also spent a lot of time just relaxing out in the garden, lying in the shade with glasses of iced pumpkin juice. One day James was apparently trying to see if he could move clouds with magic, although I don't think anything ever became of it, because the clouds were too far away – but we were able to move trees in the garden. It was nice to be seventeen and able to use magic away from school!

Mandy and I got to know James's parents better as well. Mr Potter taught me how to play chess, and Mrs Potter enjoyed just sitting and chatting with me, probably because she didn't have daughters. They were such welcoming and wonderful people, and it was lovely to stay with them – they definitely treated their guests well. Sirius, as he'd lived there for a year now, was essentially a part of the family; this meant that in addition to being well taken care of, and sometimes going to Mrs Potter for life advice, Sirius also had to help with chores like washing up the dishes, but he did that gladly, willing to do anything because they showed him the parental affection he craved.

I also noticed that Sirius and I found ourselves alone together a bit more often than usual; the closeness in our friendship we'd attained during that first night talking together on the sofa had not gone away. It was just so much easier to talk to him now as we actually began to trust one another; even though we had been friends for a while, I hadn't really trusted him until now. And ever since that night we'd stayed up talking, he was always checking in on me to make sure I was doing all right; the fact that he cared made it so much easier.

I found myself wanting to know him better, to know more about him. After we'd finally opened up to each other about our brothers, I felt more of a connection to him, and I wanted him to be able to talk to me. The only people I felt he was that close to were James, Remus, and Peter. Sirius never really showed real affection for anyone else, just that sort of superficial charming exterior. Behind that, he essentially had a guard of armor up around him. But he had started to let me through – and now that I'd seen this side of him, I wanted to know more.

Mandy was back to being her cheerful self again; she was in contact with her parents, who informed her that they had not had any attacks or pursuers since that first one, and they would be returning to the area and temporarily renting a flat, and having her come back to stay for the last few weeks of summer.

A few days later, on the first of August, the chaos in the kitchen of all of us making breakfast was increased by four owls zooming in through the window with letters. James reached out to grab his glass of pumpkin juice before it fell over, and I put my hands over my cereal to shield it from feathers.

"Must be our book lists and all that rubbish," said Sirius, taking his letter from his owl.

"Yep," said Mandy as she retrieved her letter from the puddle of spilled pumpkin juice on the table. "Ugh, the ink's running, that stupid owl couldn't have been more careful?"

As we all opened our letters, the owls departed in a flurry of feathers, leaving us with our book lists and other notice papers about the upcoming year at Hogwarts.

"Oh, this is too much," said Mandy, flinging her papers aside the instant she opened them. "I don't want to look at it, it just reminds me of how old we are. Seventh years? When did that happen?'

"But it's going to be our best year at Hogwarts," said Sirius.

"I don't know about that, it looks like we're studying flesh-eating trees again in Herbology," I said, scanning the book list.

"Why are you so quiet, Prongs?" asked Sirius, looking up from his various beginning-of-term papers. I glanced up too and saw that James had not moved an inch since opening his letter, but was holding one piece of parchment and staring at it.

"I'm… I'm Head Boy," said James, bewildered.

Sirius laughed. "Nice work, mate, I'm Head Girl!"

"I'm serious!"

"I'm Sirius!"

"No, _look!_ " James held up the badge.

Sirius's jaw dropped. "No way, is that _real?_ Has Dumbledore gone mad?"

James looked to Mandy and me, as if expecting us to assure him it was real. I was no less surprised than Sirius – James was a great student, but caused way too much trouble to be in a position of such responsibility, so I'd never have guessed he'd make Head Boy. It was true that he'd caused significantly less trouble in the second half of last year because he wanted to spend time with his girlfriend rather than in detention, but he still had quite the reputation.

"Is it a mistake?" Sirius wondered. "Maybe it was meant to go to Moony, he's the prefect after all."

"Right, that's what I thought at first too," said James, "but the letter is addressed to me."

"Well… wow," said Sirius after he had finished gawking at the badge. "That's brilliant! Congratulations!"

"Yeah, well done," Mandy and I agreed.

"I can't believe you're Head Boy!" Sirius continued, apparently even more excited about it than James was. "This is fantastic! We've got the Head Boy on our side, we can do any pranks we want. You have more authority than prefects!"

"Of course! It'll be just the same, only now I can tell the little second years they're misbehaving." He laughed. "And I can take points away from... _Slytherins_ ," he added with a smirk at Mandy and me.

"The Head Boy is _supposed_ to be a model student," I said. "I hardly think you'll be able to get away with whatever you want, abusing your authority."

"Thanks, _Mum_ ," said James, rolling his eyes.

"Let's hope the Head Girl has more sense," said Mandy.

"Wonder who the Head Girl is," Sirius mused while we ate our breakfast.

I thought about who the female sixth year prefects had been for each house. Alanna Travers for Slytherin, but she'd be terrible as Head Girl – she was far too easily stressed out, and the responsibility of Head Girl would reduce her to a puddle of worry. Priya Kaur from Ravenclaw would be brilliant, as she handled pressure very well, although I supposed her thirst for knowledge sometimes got her into trouble; only last year we'd got detention together for firing water balloons off the Astronomy Tower during our night class to see if they'd go as far as we calculated. (They did, in fact: one made it all the way to the lake and was subsequently launched back at us by the resident Giant Squid, and hit poor Professor Sinistra in the head. This was why Priya and I had got detention.)

If James was Head Boy, the Head Girl had to be someone sensible who respected the school rules. Then it became obvious to me – it had to be Lily, a great student who had been a Gryffindor prefect for the past two years and rarely got into mischief.

Mandy seemed to have come to the same conclusion, as she kicked my leg under the table, and then stared at me from across the table, raising her eyebrows. I smiled back, rolling my eyes.

James looked up from his letters, wide-eyed as he considered it too. "You don't think it's… No, I can't think of anyone else it would be! I bet it's Evans!" His free hand flew to his hair and ruffled it nervously. "Working with Evans for a year – how will I do that? She's so sick of me already."

Sirius laughed. "Well, Prongs, it's your last chance! If you mess up this year, then she'll never see you again."

James looked thoughtful, a strange expression for him. "I hadn't thought about it that way," he admitted. His shoulders slumped, and he looked defeated. "All I want is for the two of us to actually become friends."

Sirius reached out a hand and thumped him on the back. "Of course you will," he said.

Lily probably wouldn't react well when she found out she'd be spending a lot of time with James this year. One thing was certain: it was going to be a very interesting year.

James's parents, obviously, were so proud when he told them. His mum also commented on how he might now have to give up his goal of breaking every rule in the book, which I thought hilarious – clearly nothing got past her.

Later that day I received a letter from Hector, who informed me that he had been selected to be the Slytherin Quidditch team captain. He urged me to try out again this year and essentially promised I'd get on the team. I knew this was really just what Simms did, letting his friends on the team, but this time I was okay with it!

* * *

After dinner one day, James was writing an owl to Remus, Sirius went into the garage to continue polishing his motorcycle, and Mandy went off to read. I was alone in the living room, responding to an owl from Luke, who had written to me last week and I'd only just gotten around to writing back. Now that the two of us were back on friendly terms, as it seemed he was over me, I had no problem writing to him again and trying to be friends. However, I'd written about three sentences when Sirius came back from the garage. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, just writing a letter… nothing much. How does your motorbike look? You haven't polished a hole in it, I hope?"

He laughed. "Nope. I think I'm done fixing it… at least for now. Do you want to see?"

"Can I ride it?" I asked.

"Sure!" he said. I got up and pushed my quill and parchment to a corner of the table, then followed Sirius to the garage.

"I was kidding, you know," I said as he opened the garage door. "I'd crash, and then you'd kill me."

"Oh, I'm not letting you go alone, it's new!" he laughed. "I meant come with me. And if you need any more incentive, I've charmed it to _fly!_ "

" _That's_ what you've been doing all this time? Why not just fly on a broom?"

Sirius looked at me as if I was out of my mind. Obviously, this was something I was never going to understand – maybe a broom wasn't manly enough. Who knew. He set aside his maintenance kit and said, "You're only saying that because you don't know how great it is, you've never been on it. So how about it then, did you want to go for a ride?" Grinning, he sat down on the bike and patted the seat behind him.

I followed him over to the bike. "Won't the Muggles see us?"

"Oh they never look up, it's fine," he insisted. "As long as we're far enough away from the city. Let's go, before James's mum sees us, I don't think she really approves of this bike… You ready?" When I hesitated, he said, "Come on, where's your sense of adventure?"

I grinned in spite of myself. "Okay." I had just swung my leg over the seat and sat down when he started the engine. I threw my arms around him and held on tightly.

We started forward, out into the clear evening. The western sky was lit with a beautiful red glow, and a few faint stars were just beginning to blink into the dark blue above us. The motorbike took off and we were soaring through the sky in an instant. My hair was blowing in the wind behind me, and the houses below us began to look like specks - it was just like being on a broom, only much louder and faster, and felt a bit more secure. Although the feeling of security could have had less to do with the motorbike and more to do with the fact that I was clinging to Sirius as if my life depended on it…

I looked over his shoulder at the sunset in front of us. I could see why Sirius loved his bike so much. It really was an exhilarating feeling soaring above the ground so quickly and so high above everything. Suddenly, he turned the bike swiftly and we soared in the other direction – we approached a tree, way too close for my liking. "What are you doing?" I cried, my hands gripping his jacket tighter. "The tree, look out, we're going to crash!"

"Shut up, I'm the one driving!" he said, laughing as we easily avoided the tree.

"You're just trying to show off, then?" I asked, collecting myself after an almost near-death experience.

"I never took you for a backseat driver."

"I am not! I just thought you were too busy showing off to look where you were going. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen that happen!"

"I can't hear you because of the wind."

"Of course…" He might have been telling the truth and not actually able to hear me, but it was just as likely he was pretending he couldn't hear me teasing him.

"What?" he asked. He turned his head slightly, but since I was leaning so close to him looking over his shoulder, our faces brushed.

Ordinarily I would have leapt back from such an encounter – and maybe it was because we were high up in the air, but I felt no desire to move away. I continued looking over Sirius's shoulder at the gorgeous sunset and at the small houses far below us, wanting this moment to last forever. Whatever was going on, I liked it.

I couldn't stop thinking the entire time we were flying. I needed a bit of time to clear my head, but that wasn't about to happen way up there in the sky. Eventually we touched down on the ground and coasted for a few minutes, and after we'd pulled to a stop in the garage, Sirius said, "You know, I understand if you want to keep holding on to me, but we have stopped…"

"Right," I said, as my brain clicked back into reality, and I withdrew my arms from the tight grip they had around him.

"So, what did you think?" he asked as he got off the motorcycle.

"Great," I said. I didn't know what else to say – everything seemed off limits after my sudden analysis of our friendship and a realization that I might like him as more than a friend. But I was unsure even of that much – I didn't know how I felt. I was so confused.

"What's up?" he asked.

"What?"

He looked at me intently for a moment, and I became very aware of his eyes on my face. "Nothing," he said finally.

My face felt very warm. I hoped it wasn't as red as it felt. But I had a feeling it was, and maybe that's what he was looking at. I had to steer the conversation out of these dangerous waters. "Why are you staring at me? Do I have food in my teeth?"

We both started laughing, and thankfully he didn't question me any further; he put his arm around my shoulder and we started to walk outside. I grabbed his hand from my shoulder and as I flung his arm away from me, he spun around clumsily as if his arm had been the only thing holding him in place and I had just thrown him off balance. We went to sit in the front garden, laughing, and continued talking for a little while longer until the last of the sun's light disappeared below the horizon, at which point I went back inside to continue writing my letter and overthinking everything that had just happened.

"Where've you been?" Mandy asked, looking up from her book when I walked into our room with my parchment, quill, and ink.

"Nowhere," I said. She raised an eyebrow at me, and I added, "Er, I was just outside… enjoying the sunset. Great sunset today." That part was true at least!

I felt like I was lying to Mandy, and I didn't like it – although in fact, this was really the first time I had ever done so. I had never really had secrets before – especially not with a friend like Charlotte, whose reputation as Slytherin House's biggest gossip was not without reason. Usually she had the sense not to spread tales about me around, unless she found them too interesting to conceal. Mandy and I had always shared everything with each other, but my changing feelings toward Sirius were something I couldn't even admit to myself – and I didn't know what reaction to expect if I told Mandy. She was no longer interested in him, but her previous longstanding crush on him made him seem off limits – and now certainly wasn't the time to broach that topic with Mandy, because she'd been through enough this summer already.

* * *

Several days later, James, Sirius, Mandy and I were lying outside in the grass playing Exploding Snap, and it was a good thing the lawn had been watered recently or we might have started a fire. We finished a very exciting game and then abandoned the cards for a while, discussing the possibility of going out to do something that afternoon. I collected the cards and stood up to bring them back in to the house, and Sirius jumped up as well and said, "Yeah, I was just thinking of getting some pumpkin juice, I'll come with you. Anyone else want pumpkin juice, since we're headed into the house anyway?"

"Sure," said James, leaning back and lying in the grass. "Thanks."

Sirius and I walked into the house together, and I went with him into the kitchen rather than putting the cards away immediately. He retrieved the pumpkin juice while I found an ice cube tray, the Exploding Snap cards forgotten on the table. I filled the tray with water and cast a quick Freezing Charm.

"Oi, watch it," he said as I spun around holding the ice tray. "Those are good and frozen – how much hand-waving does a Freezing Charm really need? I thought you were about to slap me."

"I'd never do that," I protested. "I try to not slap people in general, it's rude. Although I could make an exception for you." I set the ice tray on the counter.

He grinned. "Well, if you're going to give me special treatment, I'd prefer something better than slapping. Maybe you could fan me with palm leaves – it is pretty warm out today. I wouldn't say no to a nice note of appreciation and praise, either."

" _Palm leaves?_ " I repeated. "Sorry, the closest you'll get is this." I shook the ice tray at him, and it poured ice cubes on his feet.

"No pumpkin juice for you, then," he said, lifting the two full glasses away from me.

"I guess I'll just have to drink it out of the pitcher then," I said with a grin. As I moved towards the counter to take the pitcher of pumpkin juice, I stepped on a slippery ice cube, and started to lose my balance. I shrieked loudly and grabbed at Sirius's elbow to steady myself from falling over.

"Sorry," I mumbled as I straightened myself up a second later. I let go of him, although his hand lingered on my forearm for a moment.

"All right?" he asked, but in a softer tone than I was expecting.

"Er, yeah," I said, the combination of his concern for me and the feeling of his fingers on my arm making me flustered. "Guess I shouldn't have poured ice all over the floor, right?" I chuckled nervously. Sirius was standing very close to me; I was between him and the wall, and I couldn't think straight. So I looked back down at the ice cubes to avoid his eyes.

"Maybe you should have gone with the palm leaves?" he asked.

In spite of myself I laughed, looking up again to meet his gaze. His face was inches from mine now, and my brain seemed to have stopped working entirely. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to push him away or pull him closer.

I heard a sudden noise and immediately looked to my right – and down the hallway I saw a blonde head disappear behind a corner. Shocked, I looked back at Sirius, who had glanced up at the noise as well. I realized one of my arms was around his neck and I wasn't quite sure how it had got there. I withdrew it instantly.

"Sirius, I…" I said, weakly pushing him away; he looked dazed, like he'd just been hit over the head. I ducked out from under his arm and sprinted down the hall after Mandy.

Just as I caught up to her, however, she darted into a room and slammed the door in my face. I heard the lock click. I knocked on the door for several minutes, and begged her to let me explain, but she didn't respond at all. Resigning, I went back down the hall, and only found Sirius again.

"Mandy's avoiding me now," I said irritably.

"Why?"

But I didn't know how to answer, whether it had to do with her past interest in Sirius or something else entirely, so I just said, "Never mind." Then I thought about saying that we should just forget everything that happened in the hall just now, and we should just be friends… but I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted anymore. Instead, I mumbled some nonsense about having left my shoes outside, turned around, and walked out the back door. I was a master of creating awkward situations; I had gone for the easy way out instead of actually solving anything, so it'd just create more of a mess later, but I at least didn't have to deal with it right now.

James was still lying outside in the grass when I walked out. "So what did you want to do today?" I asked him.

"Eh, I don't know," he said, turning his head towards me. "I was just going to come find you lot and ask the same thing. What happened to the pumpkin juice? You were taking ages, I almost fell asleep." I forced a laugh, and when James got up to head back into the house, I followed reluctantly. How was I to tell him nicely that I didn't wish to be around Sirius at all for the moment, and Mandy wouldn't talk to me, so I'd prefer it be just the two of us?

We ran into Sirius in the hall near the kitchen, and stood there talking for a bit. It was an awkward and very brief discussion. I mentioned that Mandy probably didn't want to go anywhere, but then James suggested we go find her to ask her instead; we started to walk off to find her, but Sirius lightly grabbed my arm and held me back. "Wait," he said. "I'm… sorry about what happened, I shouldn't have—"

"It's fine," I said distractedly. "It's not your fault, you did nothing wrong." I turned around and continued to walk after James. It dawned on me that Sirius had, for once in his life, apologized for something – I was actually very impressed, but I was too worried about Mandy to comment on it. I had a bad feeling about her.

As I expected, when we found Mandy she didn't want to go anywhere, and only spoke when James talked to her. She refused to even look at me. James was confused, but left her alone.

And for the next few days, every time I tried to talk to Mandy, she walked out of the room. Even at night, when we shared a room, she would just curl up on her bed, facing the wall, and pretend I didn't exist. So eventually I gave up, and the only person I really talked to was James, or his parents sometimes if they were around. I think the same was true for Mandy, too. As for Sirius and me, we weren't exactly avoiding each other, but I didn't want to talk about what had happened, and so we definitely spent a lot less time together. It was so awkward, and I began to wish Mandy and I had never come to stay here in the first place.

I felt badly for James. He probably regretted inviting us to stay at his house – he was just being nice, and all we had done was create a lot of drama. But he seemed to be under the impression that Mandy and I were both just stressed out about having lost our families; he was always there as a shoulder to lean on, and I appreciated his selfless friendship. To diminish the mess we'd created, I briefly toyed with the thought of moving back to the Leaky Cauldron, but it really wasn't an enticing idea. I'd be there all alone, dishing ice cream all day again. The truth was, I missed Mandy. If only she hadn't seen anything…

We had all been having breakfast at different times each day, and it was probably for the best because Mandy and I were still trying to avoid each other. But one morning I was just finishing my toast when James and Mandy walked in. Mandy didn't leave when she saw me, which I took as a good sign.

"That's great, when do you get to go?" James was saying to her.

"Tomorrow morning," said Mandy. "They've got a new flat and they're just moving in. It's probably not much, but I don't care – I haven't seen them since the beginning of the summer. Thanks so much for letting me stay here in the meantime, though. I really appreciate it."

"Not a problem. I'm glad I could help."

"You're going back to stay with your parents tomorrow?" I asked, surprised, my mouth full of toast. "I didn't know you'd heard from them again."

"Yes," said Mandy defiantly, a smug expression crossing her face.

I scowled. I had no idea how long she had known she would be leaving – but it hurt that she didn't feel it was worth sharing things with me anymore. And I was angry at her for ignoring me for something that was not my fault. I had tried to talk with her these past few days, but she was being immature and avoiding me. I was just so sick of her at the moment. I thought of several things I wanted to say to her, all of which were very rude, but for James's sake I said nothing and acted as if this wasn't a huge deal for me.

But after breakfast, I followed her upstairs as she went to begin packing her things for leaving tomorrow. "Mandy, this has gone on long enough," I said as I chased her down the hallway towards our room. "It isn't fair, to me or James or anyone in this house."

We ran into our room at the same time and I sat on her suitcase to prevent her from packing it.

"Get up," she insisted, picking up a shirt from the floor to begin packing.

"No. Not until we sort this out. Why are you still avoiding me? You can't keep doing this!"

She threw the shirt at me. "You inconsiderate little tramp, what do you mean _I'm_ to blame?" she hissed. "You just go and throw yourself at him, because you have nothing to worry about, and you don't even consider me!" I had never seen her so angry in my life – it was scary.

"I did not throw myself at him! I've never thrown myself at anyone!"

"Who cares!" she cried. "This is just a holiday for you, but for me it's the worst time of my life! You're a terrible friend."

"Look, I'm sorry," I said, shocked to hear such strong words from my best friend.

" _Expelliarmus!_ " she cried. My wand flew out of my hand, and we both just watched it sail across the room, and then I turned back to face Mandy, who sunk down and put her head in her hands. I sat beside her, silently, hugging my legs to my chest and resting my chin on my knees.

"I'm sorry too," said Mandy thickly. "About the horrible things I said. I don't think you're a terrible friend – you're like a sister to me, and I respect you so much. I'm really… I shouldn't have overreacted. This has nothing to do with Sirius, it was just seeing you like that without a care in the world – I'm just under so much stress, and you seem to be coping so well, and I guess I'm angry with you for leaving your family too, just when mine disappeared. But I shouldn't have taken it all out on you like this."

I looked up at her and saw just how much we had both suffered these past few days – and it only took a few seconds and both of us were hugging and sobbing.

"I'm not coping that well, you know," I admitted. "Every day I wonder if I made the right choice. I would have been miserable, knowing it was me against them while I was living there, but if we brushed it all under the rug, like Mum suggested, then maybe it would have been okay? Should I have just stuck it out?" I sighed. "I just don't know."

"We'll cope together," she said.

"Mandy, I'm so sorry," I said, leaning to the side so my head rested against hers. "Nothing is worth this."

"I can't believe we just got into a fight!" she giggled, and I laughed too. "What were we thinking?" One minute we had been at each other's throats, the next laughing. And that was all it took for us to be back to normal.

We lapsed into silence, and I sighed and looked out the window. Although it had taken a fight for us to speak to each other, I was glad we were talking again. The past few days had been awful without her. "Are we back to being friends again?" I asked. "I missed talking to you…"

"Yeah," she said. We hugged each other, and she added, "You know, you're invited to stay with me when I go back to live at my parents' place. You were originally going to, if you remember – unless you've had enough of me this summer! And… I'd love it if you'd come, I've been miserable the past three days not talking to you."

I was so glad she'd offered, because I would never have asked otherwise. And my friendship with Mandy meant much more to me than anything Sirius and I had (besides, that was essentially nothing). "No, I think that'd be lovely, thanks," I said. "And I'd love to see your parents again too – I'm so happy that they're all right, that was so scary."

Mandy and I went back downstairs to join James and Sirius, and the four of us finally had a non-forced conversation for the first real time in three days. Now that all that business with Mandy and me was over, we were able to joke and everything was funny again. I only wished we hadn't had to miss out on three days of this, now that Mandy and I were set to leave the next day.

The rest of the day was a lot of fun, and only at the end of the day when we were washing up dinner dishes did I bring up the fact that I would be leaving tomorrow as well. As I pointed my wand at a stack of plates and watched them zoom back into the cabinet, James said, "I forgot to mention, Remus and Peter are going to be joining us the day after tomorrow."

I would have liked to see them again, particularly Remus, but Mandy and I had already planned to leave tomorrow. And there would be time to see them again in less than a month when school started. "That's great! I'm not going to get in the way of you lot though – I'm actually going with Mandy to stay with her parents."

"Oh, okay," he said. "I'm glad you worked out… er… whatever was going on."

"Yeah… James, I'm so sorry about that. You didn't deserve to have us come ruin your summer with our drama. I wish I'd –"

"It's fine," he interrupted. "Really, it is. It was only three days anyway, the rest of the time was a lot of fun. I'm just happy everything worked out all right. You've had a tough summer and I'm just glad I could offer you somewhere to stay."

"Thank you," I said. "You know, I can understand why Dumbledore made you Head Boy. You may be the biggest troublemaker at Hogwarts and far too proud of it, but you're one of the nicest people I know."

"Well, thanks…" he mumbled, although he looked a little embarrassed. I grinned and gave him a hug.

* * *

The following morning we said our goodbyes, our thank-yous to James's parents, and everything. I thanked James for being so generous and hugged him, and then since it would be awkward if I just ignored Sirius, I gave him a hug too, although I let go again very quickly – I didn't want to hold on too long for fear that Mandy would change her mind about letting me stay with her. Sirius let go quickly as well, and gave me a rather sheepish smile as I stepped away from him. Mandy and I walked out onto the front porch with our belongings and Apparated into London, where Mandy's parents had arranged to meet her.

They met us by the Leaky Cauldron, and despite everything they had gone through this summer as well, they were beaming as they came over to greet us and hugged both of us. Mandy was finally reunited with her family, and I felt just as happy as she did. I realised it was just as Sirius had told me; my family kicking me out didn't matter anymore, because I still had a family – Mandy's parents were family to me.

The last few weeks of summer passed by relatively uneventfully. I was living with Mandy and her parents in their small flat. They didn't have much anymore so I slept on the sofa. Mandy and I passed our days going out into the city, or just staying home and watching Muggle television programmes like _The Muppet Show_ or _Doctor Who_. We'd already had enough drama to last the entire summer (maybe even our entire lives), so the rest of it was pretty laid back.

As the days went on, I was more convinced that anything between Sirius and me while we were at James's house was over. It had just been a product of the two of us being in such close quarters for almost two weeks. He wasn't around for me to talk to anymore and I was glad of it. So when Mandy asked me about Sirius once, I told her in complete honesty that I thought of him as just a friend. I wasn't entirely sure she believed me, but at any rate Mandy and I were back to being best friends, and that was all that mattered.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who (property of the BBC), The Muppet Show (ITC Entertainment/Henson Productions) or the song "Communication Breakdown" (by Led Zeppelin).**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	23. A New Start

Mandy and I leaned out the open window, waving goodbye to the disappearing figures of Mr. and Mrs. Macintosh on the King's Cross platform. After they had become specks in the distance, we pulled our heads back into the compartment just as Hector and Russell walked in. Hector said, "Okay, here I am. The party can start now."

"Who are you and what have you done with Hector Branstone?" I asked, laughing. "Good to see you. How was the rest of your summer? How was Greece?"

"It was great," he said, lifting his suitcase up onto the rack. "Just got back a few days ago, I'm not ready for summer to be over!"

"Of course you say that, all you did was sit on your lazy arse all day," Russell muttered.

"Hector, by the way, congratulations on Quidditch captain!" I said, remembering his last letter.

"Thanks! It's going to be great this year, I'm so glad Simms left. I was worried, because he never did any work so I thought he might have failed seventh year and then had to repeat it. So how was your summer? Er, after you moved out, I mean…"

Mandy and I looked at each other, trying not to laugh. The last Hector had heard from me was about leaving home, and the only major thing that had happened since then was Mandy and I getting into a kerfuffle, which was something we both agreed had never actually happened.

"We moved back in with my parents," said Mandy. "They were fine, they just ended up leaving for a while and then moving house."

Russell looked confused. "So what happened exactly?"

Mandy and I covered the essentials of the story, and then our discussion inevitably turned to the increasingly routine topic of developments in the war with Voldemort. We were always so much more aware of things happening outside of Hogwarts when we were away; Hogwarts served as a shield both from invading Death Eaters and from information. All we got at Hogwarts was the stuff in the Daily Prophet, which wasn't always true (even Mandy's mum said that, and she worked for them).

Russell had heard from one of his father's Ministry coworkers that someone high up in the Ministry of Magic had been under the Imperius Curse for a while, and it was difficult to investigate because no one knew who to trust. We were interrupted from our collective worrying about the future of wizardkind when the compartment door opened again.

"Just heard the news," said Charlotte as she breezed in and left her trunk in the middle of the floor, and sat between me and Hector. "Your favourite professor left."

"Whose favourite? Not Professor Trynn, is it?" I asked, shocked. I loved the Ancient Runes professor. "Did the Death Eaters find her? She's Muggle-born, I think she mentioned that once…"

"No, no, not her. I meant Professor Alvers!"

"Ugh," I said. If I were to rank my favorite professors at Hogwarts, Professor Alvers would be at about 50, even though Hogwarts only had 14 professors. He was just that bad. "He's gone, though? That's a relief!"

"Defence Against the Dark Arts professors never seem to last long," Hector observed.

"Guess what happened to him?" asked Charlotte. "You'll never guess, so I'm going to tell you. He got bitten by a werewolf!"

"That's terrible!" cried Mandy. "Is he going to be all right?"

"He _lived_ , if that's what you mean, but of course he's not all right – he's a werewolf now."

"No wonder he left," said Russell. "Wonder if he got fired or if he just resigned?"

"I don't know," said Charlotte. "I sure hope our new professor is better though. Wouldn't take much, would it? Anyway, what's new with you lot?"

We had already covered everything before Charlotte had come in, but she wanted to hear everything, particularly the aftermath of Mandy's and my temporary homelessness. So we essentially repeated much of the previous conversation, and then listened to her dish out some more gossip as we watched the familiar landscape drift by outside the windows.

As Charlotte was regaling us with some hushed-up and questionably factual scandal involving the Minister of Magic's teenage daughter running off to elope with a Yugoslavian dragon tamer, I looked up just as Sirius, Remus, and Peter walked by our compartment. I didn't think they had seen us, but suddenly Sirius turned and slammed into the door, pressing his hands against it and making a grotesque face, and then sliding down the door as if he were dying. Mandy jumped in her seat as Sirius hit the door, but passed it off unconvincingly with a badly faked sneeze. Remus grinned and waved over Sirius's shoulder while Peter just laughed, then Sirius stood up again and the three of them walked off down the corridor. Charlotte glared after them, as they had interrupted what was clearly the most gripping part of her story.

"What was that all about?" said Hector.

"Honestly, would you expect anything else from them?" I asked, laughing.

We hadn't even gotten to school yet and the three of them were running around creating trouble on the train. This was of course no different to the train ride any other year, but they didn't have James with them this time because he was probably at this moment meeting with Lily to discuss their duties, talk to the prefects, and patrol the train as Head Boy and Head Girl. And James's friends didn't let this stop them – maybe they wanted to see if James would actually try to tell them off.

Once the train stopped and we arrived at Hogwarts, we filed out of the compartment and towards the carriages. When I stepped off the train I saw Lily already halfway to a carriage, marching swiftly. Her friends Mary and Carol were running to catch up to her. I had a feeling she had bolted out of her compartment the moment she could get away from James.

I passed Snape on the way up to the carriages and we did not acknowledge each other, as was now usual. It was so strange that Snape and I had started our time at Hogwarts first year by becoming friends on the train. How much had changed since then… He wasn't even friends with Lily anymore, and they had known each other since before Hogwarts.

Mandy, Charlotte, Russell, Hector and I got a carriage together. After the ride up to the castle, we walked into the Great Hall and sat down to watch the new group of first years get Sorted before the welcoming feast.

"Ooohhh, look," said Charlotte, pointing up at the staff table and paying no attention to the Sorting Hat singing its song at the front of the hall. "That must be the new professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts! He looks like he's only in his early twenties. He must be brilliant to get a job teaching here at such a young age. When do we have his class?"

"I think Charlotte is in love," Mandy whispered to me, eyeing the new professor. "I never thought I'd see the day – you know every boy at Hogwarts annoys the hell out of her. She was always interested in the older guys and they've all left school. Until now, I guess."

"I know, remember when she had a crush on Nathan?" I said. "Eww."

Mandy rolled her eyes. "It's not _that_ weird for a girl to have a crush on her friend's older brother."

"Don't tell me you did too."

"No, I didn't. There were about three guys in our year I liked at the time, I think that was probably enough! Until you scared them away – I'll never forget you accidentally pouring Shrinking Solution on Norman's feet in third year, and how he avoided me because he thought I was in on it. Maybe it was for the best though… he didn't turn out to be that good looking. And then Caius liked Charlotte instead. Well, until she told him to go get eaten by a Hippogriff." She shook her head, and smiled at the memory.

I laughed. "Funny how Charlotte is the prettiest girl in our year, but also the most offensive."

Mandy laughed. "I wouldn't say _offensive_ , just not _friendly_ …"

"We're just used to it. But every word out of her mouth is rude and sarcastic, or else gossipy. I'm a bit amazed she's as popular as she is."

Charlotte turned around. "Are you talking about me?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I thought you were listening, but I didn't realize you were too busy ogling the new professor to hear us!"

I was probably lucky there was no food on the table yet, because if there was, Charlotte might have thrown it at me.

After the Sorting finished, Dumbledore introduced Professor Thornhill, the new Defence professor, and reminded us again that the forest was out of bounds, and other things that I didn't particularly pay attention to. I was getting hungry and the only thing keeping the food from appearing was the fact that Dumbledore was talking – a fact he probably was well aware of because his speech thankfully wasn't too long.

The food appeared on the table and I reached for a dish immediately. Charlotte had stopped looking up at the staff table and Mandy was questioning her about him already. I laughed. It was good to be back.

* * *

After the welcome feast, we went down to the Slytherin common room, where I stretched out on one of the comfortable sofas. It was the one evening we weren't going to have any homework, because classes hadn't started yet, and I intended to use that to its full potential.

"You look like my cat," said Charlotte. "He always takes up as much space as possible. Actually I think the only difference between you two is the amount of hair you shed." She picked a stray long curly hair from my sleeve and dropped it on the floor.

"Yeah, your cat sheds enough hair to weave a blanket."

"No, I meant _you_ shed more hair."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, I don't cough up hairballs!"

"After you comb your hair, I always find hairballs in the bathroom."

"Sorry to interrupt," said a voice. I looked up; it was Mark's friend Camilla, and she had a sour expression on her face. I instinctively looked around for Mark, but didn't see him; for some reason Camilla had decided to talk to me, which was weird because I was sure she didn't like me. It was also weird because Charlotte and I had just been arguing about hairballs when she showed up, and Camilla's expression told me that she thought such conversation topics far beneath her.

"Hello," I said blankly.

"What happened to Mark?" Camilla asked me accusingly. "You were always telling him who to hang around with. Now he's not back at Hogwarts."

I was affronted. "First of all, I never told him who to spend time with; he hung around with _you_ , after all. And second, why are you asking _me?_ I thought you two were friends, shouldn't you ask him instead of me?"

She crossed her arms, turned her back on me and walked away. I watched her go without caring; I had been sort of rude, but then again we had never particularly been friendly to one another. However, I was concerned that Mark apparently wasn't back at Hogwarts and had not told his friends why.

* * *

My first class on Monday was Ancient Runes. Seventh year was when we took the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests, or NEWTs, which were kind of like the OWLs in fifth year but worse. And professors wouldn't let us waste time when the exams that partially determined our future careers were at the end of the year. So I was assigned two feet of translations and about two hundred pages of reading, and when I went to Defence Against the Dark Arts class that afternoon I was already tired. I joined the middle of the queue where Mandy and Charlotte were standing together.

"Excuse me, I believe you cut in line," said a voice behind me. "How unbelievably rude."

I turned around. It was Sirius. "Sorry, I didn't realise you wanted to be first into the classroom," I said. "I'm surprised you turned up to class at all."

He laughed, resting his hand casually on my shoulder, and my whole arm felt tingly. Was I imagining it or had Sirius become more attractive since I'd last seen him three weeks ago?

No, no, of course he hadn't – he looked the same as ever. Boring, really. But I supposed that phrase about absence making the heart grow fonder was not just talk. After we'd become so close over the summer, things were definitely different, and now he was more than just my somewhat good-looking but obnoxious Gryffindor friend. To avoid looking at him, I busied myself with searching through my bag for nothing in particular.

"Hello?" asked James, waving a hand in front of my face.

"Sorry," I said. I had no idea what he had just asked me, or if he had even asked me anything at all. Fortunately, Professor Thornhill arrived just then and let the line in. I walked to a seat without looking at Sirius again.

Professor Thornhill began discussing what we would learn this year in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Charlotte was not the only person to have noticed his appearance at the start of term feast; half the girls in the class seemed transfixed by him. Veronica Smethley, sitting front and center, was staring at Professor Thornhill without stopping to write notes, or even blink. Charlotte was paying as close attention to the professor as I'd ever seen her. For the most part, I was concentrating; I spent over half the time in class paying attention to Professor Thornhill and frantically writing notes, and admittedly a fair bit of time staring ahead of me at the back of Sirius's head. And the occasional glance up to see if Veronica Smethley was drooling.

Halfway through class Sirius cast some spell on James, so when Professor Thornhill asked him a question, James could only answer in a strange growl; it honestly sounded as if he were speaking Troll. Leave it to those two to create disruptions in class on the new professor's first day. Needless to say, they started out the year by getting a detention.

It was pretty hilarious, really. I guess Professor Thornhill hadn't been warned about them, because he seemed quite rattled and uneasy afterwards, and didn't ask any more questions to the class. I felt a bit sorry for him, but I knew he'd get used to it. They regularly played practical jokes, but I had a feeling all the professors loved those Gryffindors. After all, they were all very bright students, and a little fun kept people in good spirits with something to laugh at, despite the fact that Death Eaters were running around destroying things just outside the safety of the castle walls. Why worry about the war when you should be worrying about James Potter turning your ears into leeks?

At the end of class I was able to ascertain that Thornhill was indeed a much better professor than Alvers, but I wasn't sure how much I'd actually learned in class today.

"Good start as Head Boy," said Lily sardonically to James as we filed out of the classroom. "Not even a day into the year and you're causing trouble for new teachers!" I rolled my eyes. I had seen Lily laughing just as hard as the rest of us at the disruption in class, only she'd had her hand over her mouth as if to hide that she was laughing. "What am I going to do for patrol tonight while the Head Boy is in _detention?_ " Lily asked in exasperation.

"I'm sorry, Evans," said James guiltily.

Lily made an irritated noise and walked off. Remus turned around and saw us, and stopped while we caught up to them. The others were a bit more oblivious and walked on a few paces before stopping too.

"We were just on our way back to Gryffindor Tower," said Remus. "Come join us, we didn't have time to catch up on the train!"

"Sure," said Mandy, and we fell into step beside them.

"We _could_ have had time for that on the train," I said. "If you hadn't been too busy running into the door of our compartment, that is."

"You didn't like our friendly greeting?" asked Remus, grinning.

James asked Mandy about the end of the summer as we approached the portrait of the Fat Lady that led into the Gryffindor common room.

"It was good," Mandy replied. "We didn't do much… We just went back to my parents' new flat and explored London and watched some Muggle television. That's really all. How was your summer? How long did you two stay with James?" she asked, indicating Remus and Peter.

"Just under a week," said Peter. "It seems weird that we're back here now for our last year at Hogwarts!"

"Why's it weird, thought you'd fail out before now?" Sirius teased.

"No, just that it doesn't seem real that we're seventh years! I know I've been saying so ever since we got back, but it's still true."

"Don't worry, Peter, I feel the same way," I said. "I've been thinking about it ever since we got on the train to leave last year."

It was certainly odd for me to think that just a year ago, I could never have predicted we would now be such good friends with the Gryffindors who were most responsible for playing pranks on Slytherins. Funny how things work out.

We walked into the common room and James went off to talk with two members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team who apparently had known he was coming and ambushed him in the doorway to show him their new brooms. Sirius got caught up talking to a few girls before we even made it three steps inside the room, so Mandy, Charlotte, Remus, Peter and I sat down and talked without them.

I kept glancing up at Sirius standing there with Mary Macdonald and Persephone Winchester. One of these times, unfortunately, I looked back at the group in front of me only to find Remus watching me. He raised his eyebrows, and I could feel my cheeks getting red as I looked away. I wished Remus wasn't so observant. What if he thought we came to visit only because I had a crush on Sirius? This was of course wildly false, but I didn't want him thinking it. I made a conscious effort to not look in that direction again.

This was an ill-fated goal, because Sirius soon came to join us. He walked over behind the sofa where I was sitting, and leapt over the back of the sofa into the empty seat next to me. I watched the curve of his mouth as he smiled, before reminding myself not to stare at his lips. And I had never really noticed before how lovely his grey eyes were.

 _What had happened to me?_ Soppy thoughts like this had no place in my mind – I was not the sort of person to spend all day thinking about dreamy eyes. (Except for Luke, I guess. But really, where had that gotten me?) This was not good.

I was now past the point where I could deny I had feelings for Sirius, but I knew the best thing to do would be to keep on as usual and hopefully get over him. I had no idea whether he even liked me or just enjoyed flirting with me – but I imagined that if I acted upon my feelings, I would just get my heart broken. Our friendship was too important for me to risk losing it, so I would try to just keep it cool.

But here he was, sitting next to me and being as charming as ever. There were a number of different conversations going on within the group at the same time, and Sirius was telling me jokes and trying to get me to laugh, but I refused to laugh. I looked over at Remus, but he was just smiling encouragingly. That was useless; I wanted him to say something to make Sirius leave. After all, the easiest way to get over Sirius would be to ignore him… though in the long run, that wasn't likely to work very well.

As we were all chatting, Sirius had taken out his wand and was pointing it at my hair, which I had just realized was winding around my neck and beginning to strangle me. I wasn't able to unwrap it from around my neck as fast as he was wrapping it there. The best thing I could do was to just reach up and strangle him in return, but he kept moving and it turned into a sort of one-sided tickle fight. I wasn't quite sure how this fit in with my resolution to pay less attention to him.

"Oi, you two!" said James. "Cut out the flirting, we're trying to have a discussion here."

"We are not flirting, he's strangling me!" I protested.

Sirius stopped attacking me with my own hair, and I turned away from him and struck up a conversation with Charlotte instead, who was sitting in the armchair adjacent to the sofa where I was. On Charlotte's other side, Mandy and Remus were talking about classes, but I noticed Mandy twirling her hair, laughing unnecessarily, and casting flirtatious glances in the way she only did when talking to guys she liked. Remus seemed oblivious, or at least was just acting as if this was normal. I'd had no idea Mandy fancied Remus – or maybe she was just so used to acting that way that it had become normal for her when talking to anyone whether she liked them or not. I made a mental note to ask her about it later.

After a while, James and Sirius left, much to my relief, and Lily and Mary stopped by for a brief moment. We asked each other about how summer had been, and I congratulated Lily on becoming Head Girl.

"Thanks," she said. "I was so surprised! I could hardly believe it when I got my letter."

Mary laughed. "You were the only one surprised in the entire school; I was sure all along it would be you."

"James knew it too," I told Lily. "I was at his house when he got his badge for Head Boy, and he thought there had been a mistake. But he knew you'd be Head Girl for sure!"

Lily glanced around to make sure James was not within earshot, and said, "I still have trouble getting my mind around that. I had thought it would be Remus; I owled him over the summer and asked, but he wrote back that Potter was Head Boy. Obviously I thought he was joking. And then when Potter walked into the compartment on the Hogwarts Express, I just asked him if he was lost. I still didn't think it was true. I mean, what did he ever do to deserve that responsibility? And what did _I_ do to deserve having to work with him?" She paused. "I'm sorry, that's mean, isn't it."

I smiled, and said, "You can handle it, Lily. It's only the first week."

Lily and Mary headed out, and not long after that, Mandy and Charlotte and I decided to go sit out by the lake and fruitlessly attempt to get some homework done. Remus and Peter bid us goodbye, and I couldn't help feeling that Remus still had that smug knowing look in his eye after having seen me staring at Sirius. I just hoped Remus was good at keeping a secret.

* * *

On Wednesday afternoon we had Herbology, and it was nice to be outside for class instead of in the castle when the weather was so beautiful. Technically we were in the greenhouse, not outside, but the windows were open and the sunlight and a breeze were coming through. It was lovely.

We walked in to sit at the tables. There were pots on the tables, full of dirt and odd little blue stalks. I waited for Mandy to take the seat next to mine, but Luke got there first. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all!" I said. He sat down, and Mandy, arriving a minute later, sat behind me and flicked clumps of dirt into my hair.

Once Professor Sheridan began the class and discussed how we'd be repotting and trimming Indigo Spinecorns, I reached my hand into the soil, hoping it wouldn't get bitten off by the Spinecorn lurking beneath the surface. I touched something sharp and grabbed it out of the dirt, where once out of its natural environment it became dormant. The plant looked like a spiny blue Puffskein with a stalk growing out of it. As I moved it into the other pot it started moving again, and I almost dropped it. Luke steadied my hand so I wouldn't drop the Spinecorn, and helped me replant it while it moved around and refused to stay still.

I trimmed the stalk and slid the pot to the side, and pulled over another one. We were enjoying a great conversation when, out of the blue, he said, "You know, we got off to a bad start after we broke up, but I think we're good now – do you want to try again? I really like you…"

Just because we were on good terms, he thought that meant I wanted to go out with him again? He was polite about it, but I just couldn't. I didn't know what to say, so I dropped the Spinecorn on the table to distract him. However, the Spinecorn spewed out purple slime that got all over our hands, and then rolled off the table onto the floor, where it continued to emit slime.

"Be _careful!_ " squealed Professor Sheridan, racing over to our table, her long grey hair flying out behind her. She picked up the plant from the floor where it had fallen, and crooned softly to it, gently setting it in the pot.

Luke and I glanced at one another. Here she was talking to the plant, while we still had nasty slime on our hands that was likely poisonous. Luke said " _Scourgify_ ," and the oozing liquid disappeared but left our hands purple-tinted and stinging. How did I get myself into situations like this? I looked behind me at Mandy exasperatedly.

Professor Sheridan walked away, cradling the pot containing the injured and now replanted Spinecorn. Luke stared after her. "I thought for a second that she was going to help us," he said. "Silly of me to assume that… Now what? How do we fix the sting? I don't know what to do."

"Use the Force, Luke," said Mandy's voice from behind me. I laughed hysterically. Luke was baffled, but I didn't bother explaining.

Professor Sheridan came back a few minutes later after she was done saving the plant from us. "Oh, I have a potion that can help get rid of the sting," she said distractedly. "Your hands might be purple for a few days, though."

After things had calmed down, and Luke and I had continued working, he brought up his question again. I had hoped he had forgotten in all the commotion of class and getting stinging slime on us, but I was unfortunately incorrect. I told him I thought we should just be friends, which was actually a lie – I didn't really care if we didn't talk to each other anymore, but he wouldn't have wanted to hear that.

Mandy had been lucky breaking up with Russell – the two of them had been better as friends anyway, and went back to being friends without an issue; we hung around with him all the time and there was no problem. I had thought Luke was over our relationship as I was, but even now, months after we broke up, he still thought we would get back together. Although I had been over Luke for a long time, I hated to admit to myself that one reason it bothered me so much was because part of me wanted to be with Sirius instead; something that would never happen.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: The Star Wars-related dialogue does not belong to me, Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox.**


	24. Second Hand News

The following week brought many great things, including the purple on my hands from last week's Herbology class finally fading on Monday, Charlotte's eighteenth birthday on Tuesday, and Slytherin Quidditch tryouts the next day.

At lunch on Wednesday, I tried to convince Mandy to come with me and try out for the Quidditch team again this year, but she wasn't interested. So when we finished lunch, I was walking out of the Great Hall when I heard loud footsteps running up behind me, and turned around in time to see Hector running with a Quidditch robe just before he threw it over my head, grabbed my shoulders and started marching me somewhere. "Quidditch tryouts!" he shouted.

"Yeah, in _two hours_ ," I said, my voice muffled by the robe over my head. I reached up and pulled the robe off. "Hector, this reeks. Please tell me you've washed your Quidditch robe since last year?"

"I think so."

I threw the robe back at him. "I'll be there, I promise. I just have a few things I need to do first."

After an hour of trying to write a remotely intelligent-sounding essay for Defence Against the Dark Arts, I grabbed my Cleansweep Five and hurried to the Quidditch pitch. I was still an hour early, but it would give me some time to practice. When I got there, however, Gryffindor were in the middle of their tryouts. I practiced by hitting rocks and pinecones instead.

I was alerted to the start of Slytherin's tryouts an hour later, when I heard Hector's voice shouting, "Off the field, Potter! We have it reserved now!" James, still up in the air with a Quaffle, threw the Quaffle at Hector, soared down and grabbed it again before touching down on the ground lightly.

"Sorry about that… too close?" James laughed.

"No one in Slytherin cares if you show off," I said archly as I walked by James. "We're _so_ not impressed."

Hector began tryouts with the Chasers, and I sat in the stands with other team hopefuls. I saw Elliott Jasper among the group gathered, and hoped he was just there to watch and not try out. After six people had tried out for the two remaining Chaser spots, Hector ended up choosing the same ones the team had had for the past two years: himself, Derrick and Lim.

After that was Beaters, which was good because I was tired of waiting there nervously. Three of us walked out onto the pitch to try out. I went first, and felt I did reasonably well. Hector gave me a thumbs-up as I landed afterwards; I actually had a chance this year. A third-year named Byrd followed me. He also looked like a bird; he was a short, squat kid with yellowy hair, long arms and a long beak-like nose. He hit the first two Bludgers thrown at him off in the opposite direction, but then seemed to find his confidence and did rather well. The last one to try out was Nott, and he was just as bad as last year.

Hector chose Byrd and me for the new Beaters, and Nott objected to Hector's choice and complained for a solid fifteen minutes that he had not made it on the team again. Meanwhile, Hector ignored him and called the potential Keepers down to the field; I cringed when I noticed Elliott Jasper was one of them, and I watched the tryouts intently.

Much to my horror, all of the people who tried out let in over half of the goals, except Jasper, who blocked almost all of them. As Wilkes came back down to the field after his tryout to await Hector's final choice, I ran down from the stands too. "Not Jasper," I said frantically to Hector. "You can't pick him, he's horrible. Please don't."

"You saw the tryouts, Mel," he said. "He's clearly the best one of the lot. Who else would you pick?"

Jasper had outperformed the others by far, but I wouldn't ever admit it to him. Hector stepped away to announce Jasper's position as Keeper, and the excitement I'd felt about the upcoming Quidditch season was partially replaced with trepidation because of the new Keeper.

Three people tried out for Seeker. Warrington, last year's Seeker, did well. He was a good player but I knew he was responsible for causing a lot of fouls last year. After him was Selma Yaxley, who did very well but then tried to distract Hector from Regulus Black's tryout by persuading him why she was the best choice, ultimately to no avail because Hector picked Regulus.

I understood why Hector had made the decisions he had, but I was still upset about Jasper being picked for the team. I saw all kinds of potential trouble coming from this, and wasn't particularly looking forward to a repeat of any of our previous experiences shouting and humiliating each other. Although it was true Jasper and I hadn't really gotten into a fight in months, I wondered what would happen if we were to be working together and seeing each other's failures more often. We'd simply have to learn to get along.

* * *

Charlotte's infatuation with Professor Thornhill ended the instant she got back her first Defence Against the Dark Arts essay marked with a D the following afternoon. "Dreadful?" she cried, turning to me, as if I could tell her she was seeing it incorrectly. "It wasn't that bad! How can he expect us to already be at NEWT standard, those aren't for months! What an arse."

I could sympathize; I'd gotten a P for Poor, which wasn't much better. I had thought it was a reasonably good essay, too. "Well, it's only the first paper," I said, trying to justify it to myself as much as to her. "And think about it this way – we did so badly that we can only improve from here on."

Mandy said nothing about her essay, leading me to think she'd probably gotten at least an Exceeds Expectations and didn't want to make us feel worse.

Charlotte turned her parchment over and began doodling a caricature of Professor Thornhill on the back, adding devil horns and a tail. I reached over and drew a pitchfork in his hand. Mandy coughed pointedly, and Charlotte slid her essay parchment underneath her notes just as Thornhill walked by. It had been a close call. Then we decided we'd actually take notes.

After dinner that day, Mandy and Charlotte and I got a table in the library, spread out books everywhere, and griped about how much work we had. I wrote a few sentences and was feeling particularly proud of myself for being so productive, and then Vanessa Saltz and her friends walked by. It seemed they only picked on people who were alone; they apparently were smart enough to not pick on us because we were in a group, but rules like that didn't apply to Charlotte.

Charlotte faked a look of deep concern and asked tentatively, "Vanessa, are you aware there's a spider in your hair?"

Vanessa just stared back, and I could see the gears turning in her mind. She didn't want to let Charlotte know that she was bothered, but she clearly was. Lydia, who was also a seventh year Ravenclaw almost as vain as Vanessa, scanned the top of Vanessa's hair but wouldn't touch her. Vanessa shook her head, frantically moving her hands through her hair and hyperventilating, trying to get the spider off. Charlotte, in the seat beside me, was dying of laughter.

By the time Vanessa had figured out there was in fact no spider in her hair, Madame Pince, the librarian, had noticed the commotion at our table, and headed over to investigate. Lydia purposely bumped into our table as they left, upending an ink bottle all over my half-completed essay, and then went to talk to Madam Pince, probably to get us into trouble.

That was unlikely to end well. Vanessa could act sweet if she wanted to, in a sort of fake way that I could see through but Madame Pince probably wouldn't. And Madame Pince would believe her over anything Charlotte would say, because it was guaranteed Charlotte would be rude about it.

"Let's go," I whispered to Mandy and Charlotte, and we hurriedly collected our things and dashed out of the library.

"Did you have to do that?" I asked Charlotte once we got into the corridor. "They were actually going to leave us alone, and you went and did that. I thought Vanessa might have been done bothering me, since I broke up with Luke and I think she liked him, but now she'll just be after me all over again."

"Calm down," said Charlotte. "No, she'll never be done bothering you. Maybe if there was nothing interesting in your life that she could make fun of, she would… but you're a much more interesting person than she is, so she'll always have something to pester you about."

"Still," said Mandy, "that was close. I'm amazed we didn't get in trouble!"

We turned a corner and came across James and Lily walking down the hallway on patrol, looking out for first and second years breaking their curfew. Lily was laughing; they appeared to have not noticed us yet.

"Why are you laughing?" asked James.

"Because… that was funny, I guess," said Lily awkwardly.

"But you never laugh when I say things."

"I'll try not to do it again."

"Lily! No, that's not what I meant!" he said. Lily giggled. She actually giggled, at something James said - it was a miracle, to be noted in the history books. Lily waved at us as they walked by, and James said hello.

I looked back at them as they passed us, smiling. Apparently, James had finally stopped calling her by her last name, which could only be an improvement over the past six years. To me, it seemed that despite Lily's insistence that she didn't like James, it was without much conviction. Maybe she actually was starting to like him, but she'd just gone so long saying that she didn't, and now her pride stopped her from saying she'd changed her mind.

" _That_ was also a lucky escape," said Mandy after they had passed by. "They were too busy talking to notice us, which was good because we were just discussing how we ran away from trouble in the library."

"Yeah, keep talking about it, maybe we'll run into McGonagall too," I said.

* * *

The following day Mandy and I ran into Lily again as we walked into the castle for Transfiguration after taking a break outside after lunch. Lily and Remus had been sitting under a tree together; after Lily looked at her watch, they both got up to head into the castle, Lily's long auburn hair dancing in the breeze behind her as she walked.

"Hi," Lily said brightly to us as I held open the castle door behind me for her and Remus. "How are you two?"

"Great," said Mandy. "Enjoying being outside all we can before it starts getting cold."

Lily smiled. "Yeah, good day for that. I almost didn't want to come back inside. You're headed to Transfiguration too?"

"Yep," I said. "Wonder if McGonagall would hold class outside today instead." Lily and Mandy both laughed – the idea of stern Professor McGonagall leading the class outside to teach because it was sunny was ludicrous.

We reached the queue for Transfiguration, and as we lined up, James came up beside Lily and tapped her on the shoulder lightly. A smile flicked across her face when she saw him, but the smile was quickly replaced with a businesslike expression. "Sorry… you dropped this outside," James said, holding out an ink bottle and a sheet of parchment. "And here's a patrol schedule, I finished it early."

"Oh. Thank you, Potter," said Lily, and took the bottle and parchment from him, stowing them in her bag. She glanced sideways at him again, or where she thought he was, but he had already gone to wait further back in line with his friends.

"That was nice," said Mandy. "And responsible, look at him writing up patrol schedules."

Lily shrugged stiffly. "Who'd have thought, he knows how to write?"

"Oh stop it," I said. "I saw you two having a great time on patrol yesterday."

"Well, he can be fun to talk to, on occasion. And he's really supportive of my feminist writing, which is encouraging because that's something that means a lot to me."

I couldn't hide the grin that spread across my face; Lily's grudge against James seemed to be breaking down as she got to know him better, and as he became more polite and responsible (and slightly less blatant about his rule-breaking). Even though I'd thought Dumbledore was mad when I'd first found out James was Head Boy, it seemed Dumbledore had had very good judgment regarding James.

* * *

The second time Camilla came alone to see me, I was still unprepared for her actually speaking to me, after months of her giving me disapproving looks while Mark talked to me last year.

"What?" I said rudely.

Camilla hesitated. "It's about Mark," she said. "But if you don't want to hear it, I'll leave you alone so you can keep doing your… ah, _homework_ ," she concluded disdainfully, her eyes resting on the balancing stack of Exploding Snap cards on the table, surrounded by untouched textbooks and quills. So, we'd never actually gotten around to working…

"What is it?" I said, dropping the impatient tone I'd taken with her a few seconds before.

"I just… I wrote to him," she said. "He's at home! His parents wouldn't let him come back to Hogwarts because they were worried about the Dark Lord, and wanted to keep an eye on Mark."

That wasn't unheard of – a Hufflepuff had left last year for the same reason. "Is he all right?" I asked. "Does he want to come back?"

"Well I think so, why wouldn't he want to come back? He told me to be careful though. I don't know why – it's not like the Dark Lord is going to just stroll into Hogwarts. I'm not worried anyway – I'm a pureblood."

"Good for you. You're the only one who's not worried about Voldemort."

She flinched when I said the name. "But Mark shouldn't be worried either!"

"There's probably a lot going on out there that neither of us knows about," I said finally. "I think Hogwarts is safe, at least for now, but Mark's parents want to protect him and they think they can do better. I also think it might have to do with protecting him from some students here – students who might be Death Eaters in training. But since I know you don't really trust me, at least listen to him."

She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Okay," she said eventually. I smiled encouragingly at her, and she left.

Mark's predicament got me thinking again about the possibility of Mark's idol Mulciber being a Death Eater, as I had suspected last year. Maybe Mark was better off than he realized. I turned back to the table in front of me, where Charlotte and Mandy were working their way through a Transfiguration assignment.

"Charlotte, have you told anyone that Lester is a Death Eater?" I asked quietly.

Mandy looked up from _Transfiguration Made Easier_ , and Charlotte set down her quill. "Other than you two?" she asked. "Yes, I told Slughorn. I figured having a professor know would be a good idea – and he went and questioned Lester about it, but Lester just denied it, and there's no way to prove it of course. So either he was just faking all along, and told our family just to feel important… or he actually is a Death Eater and is good at hiding it. I honestly don't know."

"Do you think he and his friends are making Hogwarts unsafe?" Mandy asked.

Charlotte shook her head. "I don't know. He doesn't really talk to me about it… even less so now, because he knows I told Slughorn. But he's my brother, I don't think he'd put Hogwarts in danger. He does bully other students around some, though… I have no idea of half of the stuff he gets up to, and although he respects You-Know-Who, I doubt he'd try to make Hogwarts unsafe." She sighed. "Mandy, you have no idea how lucky you are being an only child, with fewer people to constantly worry about."

Mandy sighed. "It's not like I haven't got anything to worry about. Everyone's worried about something right now, because of Voldemort. And anyway, I don't feel like an only child. You two are essentially my sisters. But it's true – at least neither of you are Death Eaters."

Hogwarts was safe. But these days, I found myself increasingly worried about life after Hogwarts, after this year, where there was a war going on and everything was a scary unknown. I'd recently been considering not getting a job in England at all, and simply escaping the war by fleeing east to the Continent. All I needed to do was convince my best friends to come with me.

We were interrupted when Alanna ran over to us, carrying several textbooks, her blonde hair flying everywhere and her eyes wide. Rachel followed, walking up behind her and looking slightly bored. She caught up to Alanna, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and looked over our heads at a lamp on the wall, a haughty expression on her face.

"What happened?" Mandy asked Alanna, alarmed.

"Nothing," said Alanna, looking a bit confused. "Nothing happened, why? What did you get on your Transfiguration project?

I almost laughed when I realized that was why Alanna was so frantic – it was the first time she'd seen us since getting our grades back, which meant she had had to wait several hours to compare her marks with everyone else's. If she had done well on something, she was typically much calmer than this.

"Erm… Acceptable," said Mandy quietly.

"I told you," said Rachel to Alanna, tugging Alanna's sleeve. "Of course you did better. I'm the only one who did better than you, so you're fine. Let's go, I don't want to just stand around all evening."

But Alanna looked to Charlotte, who said, "Come on, you know me better than that. I'm still not saying anything about my marks. I never have, and I never will – it's none of your business. Do you want to join us though?"

"Er… What are you working on? I have so much to do! I've been working for days on my Potions essay. I rewrote it twice. Every time I read it over there's something I realise I can do better, so I've got all these books. Are you making a card house out of Exploding Snap cards or working?" she asked shrewdly, seeing the stack of cards on top of Mandy's closed textbook.

"We're just about to start working," said Charlotte.

Rachel looked over at me and Mandy, making eye contact with us for the first time all evening, then started to tug on Alanna's sleeve again. "I think we're going to go, actually," she said, and the two of them walked across the room to a different table.

Rachel had never said outwardly rude things to my face, but I'd always had the feeling she talked about me behind my back. It was funny - I suspected that if Vanessa Saltz didn't hate Slytherins so much and Rachel didn't hate non-Slytherins, the two of them could have been great friends, because they were actually very similar. Well, maybe they would be friends. It would be interesting to see if two people who thought everyone else beneath them could actually be friends, or whether each would hate the other for thinking she was better.

I turned back to our table of work and realised I only had half the materials I needed to write my paper. "I think I'm going to the library," I said.

"It's too late," said Mandy, glancing at her watch. "Curfew is in about five minutes, you won't make it back in time."

"Yeah, but James and Lily won't care, they'd never get me in trouble," I said. "I'll be fast."

Mandy shrugged and I set off for the library. I was yawning as I walked the entire way there – I considered that maybe I shouldn't bother and should just go to the library first thing tomorrow morning, because it was late and I was probably too tired to write anything good. But I was already halfway there, I may as well just get my books now.

I got into the library just as Madame Pince turned off the lights. I asked her, "Is it too late for me to just…" I gestured towards the shelves.

"The library is closed," said Madame Pince. "I'm not going to stay around an extra hour while you decide on your books."

"I'll just get them really quickly—"

"That is how the books get damaged," hissed Madame Pince as she swooped over towards the door. "You don't just snatch them off the shelves – you have to be careful with them! I have seen many books meet a terrible fate – pages torn out, spine bent, covers falling off – because people don't treat them with care!"

"Right," I sighed, resigned. "I'll be back tomorrow then…"

I walked out of the library empty-handed and headed back to the Slytherin common room. Halfway there I heard Sirius's voice as I rounded a corner. "All right Melanie?"

I turned to stop and talk to him, but instantly felt the smile slide off my face when I saw Sirius walking with Carol Whitby. Sirius was carrying an armful of books, his other arm slung around Carol, who was smiling up at him and holding a torn rucksack.

"Hello," I said to them very coldly. "You're in the hallways after curfew." Without a second glance at them I abruptly walked past. I was baffled by the combination of feelings that arose in me – I hadn't expected something like this to bother me so much. It was possible I was making a big deal out of nothing; maybe Carol's bag had broken and Sirius had helped her with her books. But then I pictured Sirius in the hallway with me instead of Carol, and my heart felt a pang… Even as much as Sirius exasperated me, I would give anything to be in Carol's place right now.

So Sirius had been just playing with my emotions. After all that when I thought he liked me last year – now I was falling for him, but it seemed he had given up and didn't care anymore. He'd moved on. He either had no idea I liked him, or he was only interested in the chase. I supposed it was all for the best, because I'd been trying to rid my head of thoughts about Sirius anyway, so maybe this would help remind me to just keep my feelings at the friendship level. I wasn't going to be concerned about this at all.

That was my plan, anyway. But Mandy had an innate ability to sense my thoughts, and the moment I walked into the dormitory, she asked "What's with you?"

I didn't know what to say – it would require putting words to my feelings, and that would make them more real, which was the opposite of what I wanted. I shook my head and flopped down on my bed. "I thought you were still in the common room working with Charlotte," I said, hoping she'd drop it.

"No, I'm here," she stated obviously. "Charlotte's still in the common room. At least she was a little while ago. So tell me…"

"It's nothing," I said mechanically. Mandy rolled her eyes, and I gave in. "Well, I think Sirius likes Carol Whitby, I just saw them walking in the hallway together and they seemed very close."

I realized how incredibly stupid and desperate I sounded, and stopped talking, burying my face in my pillow again.

"You don't know that for sure," she said sympathetically. "It doesn't necessarily mean anything if they were just walking in the corridor; they are good friends, after all. Or maybe he was trying to make you jealous and thinks that's the best way to find out if you like him. Because as far as I know, you've never given any indication you like him. You can't expect him to make every move – maybe you should ask him to go to Hogsmeade, or something."

I lifted my head from the pillow and stared at her, and my jaw dropped. Had she actually just advised me to ask him out?!

"I can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Well… we're friends – we've only ever been friends. And that friendship means a lot to me – I don't want to risk losing him as a friend. Wouldn't I be ruining everything if he doesn't feel the same way?"

"Is it worth it to find out?" Mandy asked elusively.

I just stared back. I truly didn't know whether the risk was worth it. If he did feel the same as I did, it could be incredible, but if he didn't, every interaction would be uncomfortable and there would always be awkward feelings. Or I could keep silent while slowly falling, and at least I'd still have him around as a friend, which seemed like the best option.

"If you want my opinion, I've been thinking about this for a while," said Mandy when I didn't respond. "My old crush on Sirius was pretty shallow, which is why it went away once I got to know him. But it's different with you, and I think he likes you a lot too. You two wind each other up; I've never seen Sirius like that with any other girls. You can keep up with him in an argument. And I've seen how he looks at you. He always seems so happy when he talks to you – when you're not bickering, that is." She laughed.

I smiled. Mandy had been stalking us for ages, apparently. Despite her occasional superficiality, she could be profound sometimes, and I really valued that. But as much as I appreciated her show of support for me, I felt like she might only be saying that to make me feel better. I supposed it was true Sirius hadn't shown much interest in any girls since last year, but it wasn't enough to convince me. Had I not just seen him with Carol? "So… what should I do? You're so much better at this sort of thing than I am."

"I told you, ask him out! There's nothing wrong with a girl asking a guy out. And if he doesn't want to, you're no worse off than you are now." Then she laughed, and said, "This is really helping me, too, because I'm struggling with the same thing, different bloke, only he's harder to read than Sirius. By the way, I can't believe I'm advising you about how to get together with the guy I liked since I was eleven! You better be really nice to me for the rest of your life. You owe me. You owe me so much that I'm expecting you to pay for my first house and a lifetime supply of ice cream."

"See?" I said triumphantly. "You still like him."

"No, I'm just saying I never saw this coming – years ago I never would have imagined I'd be saying this to you. But I think you and Sirius are perfect for each other."

"Puke," said Charlotte, walking into the room. "If I knew I'd be walking into a discussion about feelings, I never would have come in."

"What have you been up to?" Mandy asked suspiciously.

"James was being a git, he told me off for being in the hallway. So I snuck up to the seventh year boys' dorm room and put Dungbombs under James's bed."

"You're a charmer," I said.

"You did the exact same thing last year," said Charlotte, and climbed into bed.

"So… who's this new bloke, Mandy?" I asked.

She glanced briefly around the room, to see if anyone was listening. I don't know why she did – it had only been the two of us for the past fifteen minutes until Charlotte walked in, and unless Rachel or Alanna had been hiding under their beds the whole time, no one was going to hear. Mandy whispered, "It's Remus."

"I thought so!" I said gleefully.

"He doesn't draw as much attention to himself as his friends do, so it took me a while to really notice him that way. And he's so sweet and sensitive – he always knows how to say the right thing at the right time."

"He's also not the type of guy who's just interested in the chase. Unlike other people I know…"

She laughed. "I still think it wasn't what it looked like. Give him a chance." She sighed. "I've noticed Remus is really closed off about how he feels though. Very secretive. I wish blokes didn't do that."

"If only everyone was as transparent as we are about our feelings, then it wouldn't lead to such drama," I said, and we both sat there laughing until Mandy tried to get Charlotte to come talk with us. It was fruitless, though – this was a topic Charlotte tended to steer clear from, and she was pretending to be asleep and did not answer. I supposed she actually could be asleep, but that was unlikely – she hadn't been there that long, and she'd definitely do something like lie there and listen to us. It wouldn't be the first time.

I felt significantly better after talking to Mandy. Even if we sometimes teased each other about this sort of thing, it was so valuable to have her support – and for her part, her feelings for Remus seemed more genuine than any of her previous crushes, like she was finally looking beneath the surface. I felt sort of a mix between being proud of Mandy as she changed and being selfishly glad that she didn't fancy Sirius anymore.

* * *

The Slytherin Quidditch team's first practice of the year was a few days later, in the evening. I was thrilled to be part of the team at last, practising with them from the beginning instead of as a last minute substitute. The only thing that brought it down was the presence of Elliott Jasper as the Keeper. Luckily, he stayed near the goal hoops, so I didn't have to interact with him much, although I did catch him sneering and heard him muttering things indistinctly when I missed a Bludger.

I ignored him. I was going to put forth my best effort this year to not get into any fights with him. However, at one point when Hector called us all back down to the ground to discuss strategies, Jasper said to me, "It's nice to see you acting normal for once. Because there are no Mudbloods on our team, you don't have to act like you're everyone's personal saviour."

"I've never thought I was anyone's saviour," I said, nonplussed. "Will you leave me alone now, or do you not feel complete if you haven't gone a day without saying I'm unworthy to be a Slytherin?"

Jasper laughed derisively, but had no time for anything else because Hector addressed me and Byrd, the other Beater, and began suggesting a couple of different tactics we could use in the game. I had a feeling Hector was just trying to prevent Jasper and me from fighting. I appreciated it, but I knew that if Jasper and I were ever going to get along, it wasn't going to start with other people interfering just in time. We'd never be friends, but I hoped that maybe if Slytherin did well at the first Quidditch match this year, then maybe he'd stop sniping at me every chance he got and we might be able to tolerate each other.

Overall, practice went well, and there were no more disagreements began between Jasper and me. Hector was doing a great job as captain, and the new players he'd selected were fitting in to the team well. I had a feeling it would be a good year for Slytherin's Quidditch team. We walked back up to the castle together as the sun began to set over the hills.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: The chapter title, "Second Hand News", is a song by Fleetwood Mac.**


	25. Carry That Weight

After Quidditch I dropped my stuff off in my dormitory, then headed to the Gryffindor common room, my feet leading me there almost of their own free will. If my feet had consulted my head about doing this, I would certainly not be going, because if Sirius was there I might end up saying stupid things around him. But my feet resolutely led me there. I walked in and saw groups of people here and there; Sirius was sitting with Peter by a window, the former tapping his foot rapidly as if something was bothering him, the latter flicking pieces off a chessboard moodily.

"Er, hi," I said as I approached. Sirius looked up at me, his frown disappearing when he saw me. Peter began to clean up his chess pieces, and I talked briefly with the two of them. Apparently James had just left for the Owlery, but I hadn't seen Remus all day, even in class. "Where's Remus been today?" I asked.

"He's ill again," said Sirius. Remus seemed to be very prone to illness; it happened quite frequently. I guess it ran in the family, because he'd often be gone from Hogwarts for a couple of days to visit his sick mum every now and then.

"Aw, I hope he feels better," I said.

Peter had finished picking up the fallen chess pieces and stowed them, and then started walking away. "Good to see you, Melanie," he said as he left. "See you later, Padfoot."

"What _is_ it with those nicknames? After a year of hearing them, I still don't get it. You're Padfoot, Peter is Prongs… no, that's James…?"

"That's sort of how nicknames are, not everyone needs to understand," said Sirius evasively.

"Where'd old Snaketail go, anyway? Is he afraid of me?"

"Snaketail?" asked Sirius blankly, and then laughed. "You mean Pete – and it's Wormtail, by the way. And sure, I reckon he's afraid of you. Maybe because of the way you walk around like this." He raised his hands like claws and made a face. "It scares everyone."

"What are you talking about, that's my friendly face," I said, imitating his expression and claw hands, and then laughed as I sat down beside him. "You know, I actually saw something that looked like that on holiday in Wales when I was little," I said. I began telling him the story of how Nathan had tricked me into believing there were Yetis in Wales, but when I saw one, it turned out to just be Nathan in a furry costume. This led into a competition of sorts in which we tried to outdo each other's stories. I had a feeling Sirius was embellishing most of his anecdotes.

"…and that's when we found a unicorn," Sirius continued. His story was sounding increasingly less probable the more he told of it.

"I don't believe you," I said dismissively. "Unicorns are shy – they only like innocent, trustworthy people. They wouldn't go anywhere near you."

"I was six! And Reg was five. Little kids are innocent and trustworthy. The unicorn loved us."

"Until you scared it away."

"No, until my mum started shouting at us to stop wandering off and come back. Family holidays, they were the greatest…" He sighed. "It's strange to think that we were once actually happy."

After a short silence, in which I had no idea what to say, and Sirius apparently felt no need to elaborate, I informed him of some relevant Slytherin Quidditch news.

"Regulus is the new Seeker for Slytherin this year, did you know?"

Sirius raised his eyebrows. "I didn't even know he knew how to play."

"He's actually rather good."

"Who cares," Sirius grunted, frowning again.

I had a feeling that was not entirely true. After encounters with Regulus, Sirius was usually rather moody, and it was plain to me that he did care. But I could sense him starting to close off, so I didn't press the issue. I knew Sirius well enough by now to know that he would only talk about Regulus of his own accord, and not because anyone asked.

So I leaned on his shoulder, without really knowing why I did. If he made a big deal about it, I could easily just say I'd fallen over or something. But he didn't seem to mind, and I savoured how nice it felt to sit there together, though very aware of how close his hand was to my leg. Maybe if I moved my leg… No. That would do nothing except probably make him uncomfortable with sitting next to me. Besides, the memory of him and Carol in the corridor together kept popping up in my mind.

"We used to be so close," said Sirius unexpectedly, and I looked up at him; he was staring off into the distance, his face set, eyebrows knitted. "He was my best friend when we were children. That was before I really noticed anything wrong with how my parents raised me. But I eventually figured it out by putting together all the pieces, and Regulus refused to listen to anything I said against the family. He cut me out of his life when I ran away, just like the rest of them did. And it just kills me every time I see him."

Unprepared for this deluge of all the emotions and anger Sirius was holding on to, I suggested timidly, "Maybe you should talk to him?"

"No," Sirius retorted vehemently. "He wants nothing to do with me."

"You think so? I think you're both just too stubborn to talk to each other. Maybe he's as unhappy about this as you are."

Sirius shook his head. "He's not. I just ran into him before I came up here… it's what I was upset about when you came by. He never talks to me, but when he does, it's only to remind me that he's ashamed to be related to me. I can't fucking handle it anymore. I hate him and my whole family. And I hate myself," he added forcefully, pounding his fist against the cushion we sat on.

"Sirius, don't," I said, wrapping my arms around him and resting my head against him, and he seemed to relax slightly. "Don't blame yourself."

"But things could have been different," he continued, in a softer tone. "If I'd gotten him out too, when I ran away. But I didn't. I've tried so hard to be a good brother, to guide him, to make up for leaving, but he's turned his back on me, and there's nothing I can do about it anymore."

"Maybe he just keeps up the act because he's worried what his friends will think about him otherwise," I said. "If he's anything like you, he's full of secrets, so it can be hard to know what he really thinks. But… some things you can't be told, you just have to figure out your path on your own. Like you did."

"Hopefully he figures it out before he gets involved with the Death Eaters."

"The world is not split into good people and Death Eaters, Sirius," I said softly, thinking of Nathan. "It's possible for someone to be both." I hadn't talked to Nathan since I left, and the last thing he'd written to me was over the summer when he tried to justify his decision to join the Death Eaters, but I was still convinced that despite everything, he was a good person. Then there were also people like Vanessa Saltz, who was neither a Death Eater nor a good person.

My thoughts drifted to my estranged brother. I wanted to fix things with him, but I just had nothing to say to him. I'd be willing to talk to him again if he admitted he was wrong. And maybe that was the same reason Sirius and Regulus wouldn't talk to each other – they were each convinced the other was wrong, and if Regulus was as stubborn as Sirius was, they'd never work it out.

Sirius only shrugged, so I told him, "It's hard. I understand."

He sighed. "I know. And, er… thank you."

We lapsed into silence for a few moments. I took hold of his hand and squeezed it, in what I hoped could be interpreted as just a friendly, comforting gesture. Although he didn't try to withdraw his hand, he looked down at our hands after a moment and I reluctantly let go of him.

Just then, the common room door opened and James walked in. He cast a glance at Sirius and me by the window, flashed a quick grin at us, and started to head for the stairs to his dormitory. Sirius moved slightly, causing me to stop leaning against him, and I instantly missed his touch.

A worried second year walked up to talk to James. Across the room, Lily was sitting in an armchair taking notes on a book, but began tapping her quill against her book and occasionally looking up at James out of the corner of her eye. I didn't pay attention to James's discussion with the kid, but after a few minutes the kid smiled, and James gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and headed for the stairs again. Lily instantly leapt up and walked over to James before he disappeared up the stairs. "Potter, wait," she said.

James turned around. "What is it, Lily?" he asked politely.

She took a step closer to him, glancing around as if to make sure no one was watching them. I looked at the wall past Sirius and kept subtly listening to James and Lily.

"Oh, it's nothing important," she said. "I was just wondering how you found that room where we danced together after patrol last week? I've been looking all over the seventh floor but it seems like that room's just disappeared!"

I giggled to myself and leaned forward slightly to hear them better, now making no effort to be subtle. Apparently patrols were more fun than I imagined.

"I'm not sure, actually," said James. "It just shows up every now and then."

Lily smiled wryly. "I guess that's one of the few advantages of having a rule-breaker as Head Boy – you know the castle better than anyone."

" _Former_ rule-breaker. I haven't broken a rule in at least… two weeks."

"Congratulations," said Lily. "But I think staying out after patrol counts as breaking rules as well. So that'd be one week, not two."

"All right, one then. I had fun last week, by the way – you're a great dance instructor. I managed that Eclectic Slide thing much faster than I learned Apparition last year."

"Electric," Lily corrected. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. Maybe we can do it again sometime. Erm… how are you doing, by the way? I heard about your dad…" She looked up at him with eyes full of concern, her nervous hands held behind her back.

Confused, I looked back at Sirius. "His dad is really ill," he explained. I returned to watching the Head Boy and Girl – Lily was hugging James, and he thanked her for her support. With a slightly red face, he then headed up the dormitory stairs, and Lily marched back across the common room in a dignified manner and returned to reading her book.

Shortly before I left the Gryffindor common room for the night, I met up with Lily to discuss our new Runes translation, and in response to it we wrote up some silly runic poetry full of double entendres. Eventually I asked her how she was liking being Head Girl. She discussed how much work it was, but how rewarding… and even mentioned that she was starting to enjoy working with James.

"He's really changed a lot this past year, you know," she said, more to herself than to me.

"In a good way?" I asked, eager for her response.

"Yes," she said pensively. "I mean, I never thought I'd…" She stopped and looked at me again, perhaps realising she might be about to say too much. "He actually seems responsible. He puts his Head Boy duties ahead of pranks with his friends… most of the time, anyway. And I'd never realised how much he cares about people; I've seen him be so compassionate without expecting anything in return. And I just felt awful for him after hearing about his dad. I think patrolling with James has made me see an entirely different side of him."

I smiled slyly. "Like the side of him that does the Electric Slide?"

Lily blushed. "You were eavesdropping! Well, we had been discussing music during patrol, and he's not too familiar with Muggle music and dance. He was so confused by the idea of disco that I told him I'd teach him. And then after patrol we found a little dance studio room – I'd had no idea Hogwarts had one, but there's one on this floor – and I taught him the Electric Slide. He's a quick learner. We had a lot of fun."

"So you think you two could actually be friends?"

"We are friends. And that's all, so stop it, I can see you're getting ideas about us, just like Mary and Carol are."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. But I couldn't help grinning.

* * *

The Slytherin Quidditch team had another practice the following day, albeit a shorter one, because there wasn't a whole lot of time between afternoon classes and dinner that day, and Gryffindor already had the Quidditch pitch booked for after dinner.

On my way back into the castle after practice, I saw Lily, Remus, and Sirius walking together towards the Great Hall ahead of me. Remus appeared to be chewing a piece of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum; he was blowing large blue bubbles which lingered behind him in the hallway as they walked. As I ran up behind them to catch up, Peeves the poltergeist whooshed in from an abutting corridor and hovered in the air above them. He threw something at Lily, who jumped aside, and Sirius reached up to knock Peeves out of the way.

Remus calmly took the chewed piece of gum out of his mouth, pointed his wand at Peeves, and muttered " _Waddiwasi_ ," shooting the gum into Peeves's nostril. The others laughed as Peeves cursed and zoomed away.

"Sometimes those spells you lot make up are pretty good, I'll admit," Lily told Remus.

"Hey," I said to them, catching up. "I saw that, Remus – I think I'll have to make sure I always have gum with me wherever I go in case Peeves drops by. That was neat."

"Thanks! I've got a few more of those tricks; I've finally learned how to stay one step ahead of Peeves. I could teach you a few if you want."

"Please do," I said. "I'm usually one step behind." I recalled the many times Peeves had interrupted Luke and me when we were in the corridors or alone together in empty classrooms.

"What are you doing following us to the Gryffindor table?" asked Sirius as we approached. "Decided to be a Gryffindor today because it's the best house? Or – don't tell me – it's because I'm so irresistible that I've led you astray."

"That's exactly it," I said. "I couldn't stay away because I fancy you." Then I realised what I had said, and clapped my hands over my mouth, as if to prevent more unintentional words from spilling out. He'd meant it as a joke, but I'd gone and ruined it, and I glanced at him nervously to see a very confused look on his face.

"Only joking," I insisted, thinking this would work better, as he didn't seem to want to hear that I liked him. "Tricked you, didn't I?"

Then I turned away to pretend I was interested in what Lily and Remus were discussing (they were talking about rules, so that was already a lost cause for me), but moments later I heard Sirius chuckle beside me, and did not appreciate it.

"What is it now?" I asked him.

"Well, it was a clever joke, but I notice you're still here…"

"Fine then, I'm leaving," I said. A few people at the nearby Hufflepuff table were staring at me; I gave them a rude hand gesture as I stormed by. Sirius called my name to get me to turn around again, but there was no way I'd let myself near him ever again. On my way over to the Slytherin table, which, unfortunately, was all the way across the hall from the Gryffindor one, I thought of a lot of great comebacks I could have used instead of the lame "I'm leaving". Too late…

I made sure to sit in such a location at the table that I couldn't see him. I was facing away from the Gryffindor table, and indeed away from all the other tables, but I could hear the excited buzz of talking. In reality, they were probably just talking about normal things, but at that moment I couldn't help feeling that everyone was laughing at me. I could still feel the intense blush on my face, and I wanted to disappear.

Mandy joined me at the table, and it seemed she'd witnessed the whole thing too. "Hey," she said.

I sighed. "Mandy, I'm an idiot," I said.

"It wasn't that bad," she said. "I've done much worse, trust me. I know you're embarrassed, but honestly it isn't a big deal. It was just one little thing; no one will care tomorrow."

Of course, word got round the school that I fancied Sirius, much to my shame, and it seemed Vanessa Saltz had elaborated the story, as she always did. The story circulating around Hogwarts was that I had told Sirius I was madly in love with him and then we had gotten into a fight. Vanessa also had supplied any listeners with her opinion that Sirius would never go for a Slytherin like me, I had absolutely no chance with him, and everyone regarded me as such a joke. There was no way I could actually ask him out now, like Mandy had suggested.

It was another two days before I spoke to Sirius again. Every time I saw him, I would quickly walk in the opposite direction; I couldn't trust myself to say normal things around him anymore, after my complete blunder in the Great Hall. But eventually, on my way out of class, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see Sirius. My heart started beating faster, and I fidgeted with the clasp on my bag. "Melanie," he said.

"Black," I responded coolly, in control of my emotions this time.

He let out a barklike laugh. "Been a while since you called me that."

I didn't really know what to say – it would have been so much easier if I knew where I stood with him. "Sorry about that display in the Great Hall the other day," I said airily, as if it was nothing. "That was awkward. I know I'm an idiot, you don't have to tell me."

"Oh – that's not what I was going to talk about," said Sirius. "I had almost forgotten about it."

I rolled my eyes. "No you hadn't," I said.

"Okay, no, I hadn't forgotten," Sirius admitted. He was regarding me with a strange expression; he kind of looked lost. "Actually, I wished you hadn't run away after that, because… well—"

Some loud giggling interrupted him. We turned and saw a few fifth year girls hiding behind the statue of Winifred the Worldly, sneaking glances at Sirius and waiting in vain, as they always did, for him to stop what he was doing and come talk to them. One of them waved, and Sirius turned back to me instantly, a scowl on his face. So maybe Mandy had been right – I wasn't _that_ bad.

But whatever Sirius had been about to say, he no longer felt like saying it with an audience. He merely twirled his wand in his fingers.

"You didn't get enough hexing people during class?" I asked. He'd been transfiguring Snape's quill into a centipede from across the room every few minutes during class.

He laughed when he saw that I knew what he was thinking. "I'm not actually going to do anything," he said. "I just wish they'd leave me alone for once."

"What, leave you alone with me? That'd never be good, considering what happened last time I talked to you. But don't worry, I won't do that again – I was tired and couldn't speak clearly."

"You can do it again if you want to," he said. "I rather enjoyed it."

I jabbed him hard in the ribs with my elbow. One of the fifth-year girls stared at me in shock, as if I'd just burnt down a building or something.

"Sod off," I said to the girls finally, waving them away. "Find something else to entertain you." They slunk away down the hallway with jealous sullen faces. "Easy as that," I told Sirius.

"You have a way with words," he said. "Well, sometimes."

"We're done talking about that," I insisted. He was never going to let me live that down. "I have to go, actually."

"Why?" Sirius seemed content to just stand there and talk with me in the corridor, but I was worried I'd say something stupid again; I couldn't think straight when he was around. Keeping up the act of 'just friends' was becoming more difficult each day. And as much as I loved Sirius's company, I didn't really enjoy talking with someone I had very strong unrequited feelings for. He took a step towards me but I turned and walked away. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"It's getting late, I should start my homework," I invented.

He frowned. "All right," he said. "Well, see you around then."

I walked away, frustrated and confused, and tired of going in circles with Sirius. Sometimes it came across that he cared about me; the memories of the summer riding around on his motorbike always made me smile. We had a lot in common, and sometimes even enjoyed fighting with one another. I had thought for a little while that he was changing – that he was letting me through his wall he'd built up around him. But we weren't really that close, as much as I wanted it; we still got in plenty of fights, after all. I didn't know what to make of it.

* * *

I was browsing a shelf in the library, which was becoming one of my most frequent haunts this year, when someone showed up by my side to grab the last copy of _An Encyclopedia of Toadstools_. It was Carol Whitby. I offered her a friendly smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace.

"Hi, Melanie," she said brightly. "I never thought we'd need to remember all of these toadstools – Herbology has been such a challenge this week! NEWT year is intense. It was even too intense for my rucksack, you saw what happened to it with all those books!"

"Yeah," I said. "At least if nothing else, this year will give us strong arms."

"That'll help you out in Quidditch," said Carol with a laugh. "Walking to class with an armful of textbooks is a workout."

"Carol! There you are," said Lily's voice, and we turned to see her at the end of the shelf. "I wondered where you'd got to. Oh, hi, Melanie!"

Carol turned to go, encyclopedia in hand, and I looked back at the shelf. There was a pair of eyes watching me from the other side.

"Althea?" I asked, surprised.

She stepped around the shelf, a book in her hand entitled _An Introduction to Healing Magic_. "Hi," she said. "I didn't mean to be creepy. I was just looking at this shelf and heard your voice through there, and then… well, you saw me just at that moment."

"You weren't creepy!" I laughed. "It's good to see you again." I glanced once again at the book in her hand. "Is that for a class, or are you thinking of becoming a Healer?"

"Oh! Yeah, I am," she said, grinning. "It's not for class. Is it weird that I read books like this in my spare time?"

"Not at all," I admitted. "Just yesterday I declined to hang out with my friends in favour of curling up with a book about the core of magic. A lot of it didn't make sense, but it's really interesting."

She just stared at me in bewilderment, and then asserted, "Maybe we're just both really weird."

Just then, Hector walked by the shelf where Althea and I were standing. "Hey, Mel," said Hector, and lightly hit the side of my head with a book.

"Watch it, Hector, I've got three times as many books in my hand right now, and I'm not afraid to use them."

He dodged out of my reach, continuing down the shelf away from us, and waved at Althea before disappearing out of sight. "Sorry about him," I said, turning back to Althea, who looked like she was attempting to camouflage with the bookshelf, her face brick red as she stared at the floor.

"What's up?" I asked her, baffled, and then wondered… maybe she liked him? Hector was a really nice person. And I supposed he was cute too, if you ignored how weird he was and how often he demonstrated his ability to cross his toes after Quidditch practices.

But the only time I'd ever seen Althea and Hector interact was when Hector helped her with her trunk on the Hogwarts Express at the end of last term, and she hadn't really spoken to him then, although he had tried to talk to her.

Althea said nothing. With no idea what to say, I merely told her, "That was Hector Branstone."

"I know," she finally said. "Although I don't think he knows who I am."

"Do you want him to?" I asked. She blushed even more. I suggested subtly that she should try talking to him, and that he was friendly, and I might have slipped in the fact that he did not already have a girlfriend. I was really bad at this advice stuff, but she seemed to be encouraged.

"What should I say to him?" Althea asked. "How do I get him to notice me?"

"Well… the ways I've gotten guys to notice me include accidentally hitting them in the head with Bludgers or fighting with them. That's worked for me. But maybe I wouldn't really advise that…" She really needed Mandy's advice, not mine!

She laughed. "Maybe I… I'll stop by the Slytherin table at dinner tomorrow? And you can introduce us?"

"Sure." That seemed easy enough. There would be no injuries involved at all, and no fights. Why couldn't I have thought of something so normal?

I added a fourth book to the stack in my hand, said goodbye to Althea, and went back to sit at my table. Across the library I could see a large group of Gryffindor seventh years sitting together, just a big group of friends, and it made me think that I had possibly just been overreacting to seeing Sirius and Carol that time in the hallway. I could only be embarrassed now about how much time I had spent stewing in jealousy, when in reality they were just housemates and good friends in the same year – much like myself and Hector, probably. I needed to stop getting paranoid about little things, because I'd worked myself up over nothing. I supposed now that the only way to find out how Sirius felt was to ask him out – which was a task I found quite daunting.

I contented myself with the fact that I was helping Althea do something I could never do. Maybe this was why Mandy was so prone to matchmaking for her friends – it drew her attention to other people's happiness rather than her own unrequited love for her various crushes. This was at least something to hope for if Sirius and I together ended up just being nothing more than a wish.

But at dinner the following day, Althea happened to stop by while Hector was levitating his soup out of his bowl to cool it down, and somehow poor Althea ended up with soup all over the front of her before Hector even noticed she was there. She remained behind us, as if rooted to the floor, her face crimson, and although blushes didn't show up on Hector's dark skin, I could tell by his twitchy movements that he was mortified. They both apologised profusely to one another, Hector helped Althea siphon the soup out of her robes, and then they had a laugh about it. The introduction was made; it had all worked out, although entirely not how I had envisioned.

* * *

On the last Wednesday morning of September we had Charms, in which we were learning the Protean Charm. As I took notes at the beginning of class about how the charm causes one object to change and to mimic another, I spent part of my time watching Sirius and trying to figure out what exactly was going on between us, and debating whether I should still bother asking him out.

"Stop staring at him," hissed Charlotte, "you're as bad as Mandy."

Mandy and I both scowled at her. I went back to my notes until we were to work on the practical aspect of the charm: We each had two identical teacups, and by changing the characteristics of one, the other was supposed to follow.

"This would be useful with writing notes," said Charlotte. "If Mandy took notes for all of us, and we put a Protean Charm on her notes, it would copy onto our parchment."

"Brilliant," I agreed.

"I would take useless notes," said Mandy. "Then you wouldn't get anything from copying!"

"And you would have useless notes to study from," Charlotte reminded her. "All right, where was I?" She attempted a Protean Charm on the teacups, and then elongated the handle on one of them. The second cup did nothing.

A teacup whizzed by my ear, sailing all the way to the front of the classroom where it crashed into the blackboard. "Sorry," said a voice behind me. "Think that was the wrong charm…"

"That almost killed me," I muttered as I prodded one of the teacups in front of me.

"Better you than Mandy, because I need her notes," said Charlotte. I hit her with my elbow.

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Well _I'd_ be sad, Mel. At least one of us cares about you."

Charlotte scoffed. "If I died, you wouldn't need to be sad, because I'd come back and haunt you from the grave. Isn't that nice? The things I do for you two…"

"Yeah, that's pretty great," I said dryly. "I've always wanted my own personal ghost."

"Plus, as they say, dead people tell no tales," Charlotte continued, "so obviously I'd want to stick around and get all the dirt from living people anyway. I wouldn't let something silly like death get in the way of gossip."

Mandy and I laughed. "Divination is really getting to you," Mandy said. "Having to predict your own death every other week – you've gotten so used to it that you've already planned out what will happen after your death."

"Hector had a really good one in class the other day," said Charlotte. "He said he'd unexpectedly die from heavy books falling on his head. He usually sits at the table right in front of the bookshelf, where everything's really poorly balanced. There are some books that could easily fall, and he sits right underneath them – I swear Professor Sage was actually wondering whether to move those books for his safety, or to leave them there and prove him right and show the class what a good Seer he is."

"I've never been more glad that I dropped that class," said Mandy.

"Ah, sitting around chatting?" squeaked Professor Flitwick, who had showed up right next to our desk as he walked around the room to check on everyone. "So you must have figured it out. Let's see, Miss Hastings."

I turned back to my own teacups, clearing my throat. " _Protea_ ," I said, waving my wand extravagantly. This charm had weird wand movements that made it a particularly difficult charm. Then I attempted a colour-change charm on the first teacup. The second one melted into a porcelain puddle. "Er – still working on it, sir," I explained.

"Good try," he said. "You'll find that the easiest way to master the charm is to practise." He walked off to the next desk, and I renewed my efforts to perform the Protean Charm, but was mostly unsuccessful. Towards the end of class I had managed to turn the second cup a slightly lighter shade of blue, but it wasn't much.

About ten minutes before when class would normally get out, the corridors filled with noise. It didn't sound like the noise of students fighting – it sounded like a lot of people running around. Flitwick walked over and opened the classroom door curiously.

After he'd done little but stand there trying to calm the commotion, and a few people in the corridor had come to talk to him, some of us in the class stood up and walked to the doorway to witness it ourselves. We looked out of the classroom to absolute disarray and chaos in the corridor. Prefects were running around, herding younger students; everyone was talking in whispers. I was overcome with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. Whatever this was, it was serious.

James appeared from inside the classroom and walked into the fray, attempting to bring some sort of order and calm people down, although it was clear he had no more idea what was going on than anyone else did. Lily came up behind me and asked what had happened, and I shrugged, but then she saw James talking to two sixth year prefects and went to join. I asked Priya Kaur, next to me, what had happened.

She replied, "No idea – I was just asking Carol!" She turned to the girl next to her.

Carol Whitby looked at us with wide eyes. "All I heard is that someone's been injured, they were just taking her to St. Mungo's a few minutes ago."

"I heard there were Death Eaters in the tower!" someone else supplied.

By the time we got to lunch, we had talked to enough people and had a pretty good idea what had occurred, unless the tale had been altered significantly before getting passed on to us secondhand, or fifth-hand, as it were. Two Death Eaters had found a way to get into the castle. They had shown up on the West Tower, and on their way in, attacked a student before being discovered and caught. The Death Eaters had been taken to Azkaban, the high-security wizard prison, but Artemis Jones, a sixth-year Hufflepuff, had been taken to St. Mungo's, as she'd been found critically injured and barely alive.

The Great Hall was abuzz with discussion at lunch. "How did they get in?" I heard Hector asking Andrew Derrick.

"And what were they trying to do? There were just two of them."

"Who knows if we'll ever find out," said Russell. "But at least they're in Azkaban now."

Dumbledore made a brief announcement at lunch about what had happened, so as to clear up any confusion, and to assure us that the protective spells on the castle would be improved immediately, and there'd be Ministry workers here for a couple of days until that was sorted out.

I wondered if Dumbledore's words would be enough to convince people, or whether some parents would pull their kids out of Hogwarts. Students had been disappearing from Hogwarts gradually over the past couple of years. Not a lot of people, but enough to notice. Two had disappeared mysteriously over holidays, others had left school after things had happened to their families, and still others left because they felt Hogwarts was no longer safe, like Mark. It was true, Hogwarts wasn't entirely safe – we had a painful reminder of that today – but I felt it was still much safer here than I'd be anywhere else.

Rumours continued to circulate about Artemis Jones for days. She was so far unresponsive to the Healers' treatments; she'd been hit with very powerful Dark curses. No one would say it directly, but all I heard was that things were not looking up for her and people were expecting the worst.

A task force had been appointed to developing further magical protective spells to put on the castle. Some Aurors had been brought in from the Ministry – people whose job it was to fight Dark wizards and prevent things like this from ever happening again. I kept seeing them in the corridors and on the grounds.

"Those Death Eaters must have found a way to get around the protection already on the castle," growled a tough-looking Auror to Professor McGonagall before Transfiguration on Friday. "Merlin knows it was well protected – there were a thousand spells on the castle. Now it can withstand more; there are about three times as many spells. Nothing's getting through that at all. Of course, this is a war and you'll still want to be on guard and vigilant at all times."

"Good. Thank you, Alastor," said McGonagall. Then she led the queue in for class, a few of us still staring after the Auror as he departed. Scars covered his entire face. And that eye – he had a bright blue eye that rotated around creepily, and independently of his normal other eye. I felt uneasy just looking at it. So that was what you got for a lifetime of fighting Dark wizards…

This Dark activity and the unease surrounding it, combined with the information that Charlotte had confided in Professor Slughorn about her brother Lester, prompted me to ask our Head of House for advice as well. Slughorn might have liked Mandy better than he liked me, but he wouldn't turn away a student who needed help; he appreciated when his opinions were valued. So I stayed behind after Potions one day, and told him my terrible truth, that my family and I were on opposing sides of the war and I didn't know what to do.

He offered me a piece of crystallised pineapple to buy time as he let my words sink in. I appreciated that he didn't ask for more details, or blame either party more than the other; like many of Slytherin house, he put out the impression of not being on either side in the war. Finally, he said, "Miss Hastings, I'm sorry to hear that. It's a rough time. I think perhaps a lot of people are going through similar trials."

It was odd to hear him speaking without any trace of his normal jolly mood. I nodded, admitting, "I just… I have all this regret, but I know I'd do the same thing over again. They won't change their minds and neither will I."

"We all live with regrets," said Slughorn lightly, retrieving another piece of pineapple from the jar. "I don't think anyone knows how to deal with a war like this properly. All we can do is take it a day at a time, and see what happens."

There was a brief moment when we sat there silently in intense thought, him inspecting a piece of pineapple, and me staring at the desk. The fingers of war had an enormous reach, which no one knew how to navigate and solve everything; even an adult and professor like Slughorn was as lost as I. But even if the road ahead would be rough with my family, I knew where I stood, and I'd stay true to it. There was little I could depend on outside Hogwarts, but I could count on myself, and I left feeling slightly better.

* * *

Charlotte, Mandy and I were sitting on the sofa in the common room, practicing for Charms, when Charlotte's cat came slinking down the stairs and stopped by the sofa. His name was Lancelot, although Mandy always called him Wilbur, a name she said was more fitting considering the way Charlotte doted on him. Apparently it was from one of Mandy's favourite Muggle books as a kid. It wasn't like it mattered, anyway; Lancelot didn't respond no matter what you called him.

"Wilbur!" said Mandy, reaching out and stroking Lancelot as he jumped up on the sofa.

"His name is not, nor will it ever be, Wilbur," said Charlotte mechanically.

"What if it was his middle name?" said Mandy. "Lancelot Wilbur Avery. That's a great name!"

"If you think it's so great, name your first kid that," said Charlotte, reaching over and picking up Lancelot off of Mandy's lap. "Hi Lancelot," she said in a much higher voice, stroking her cat behind the ears.

"But my last name isn't Avery."

"Well, what about _two_ middle names, and Avery is the second one," I suggested to Mandy.

"Or you could marry Lester," said Charlotte, which resulted in a great deal of laughter from all of us. It was weird to hear the sound of laughter for what was probably the first time in two days. I wasn't sure if it was acceptable yet. I sighed and set back to work.

Several hours later, I was the only person still awake in the common room, still practicing the Protean Charm on two quills. It was well past midnight when I heard a noise behind me and jumped, then turned around and saw only Mandy.

"Hey," she said. "I finally finished that Charms essay and my eyes are crossing."

"Ugh, I know," I said, flailing my arm and sweeping my two quills off the table.

Mandy pointed her wand at the quills and watched as they zoomed neatly back to the table, atop my textbooks. "Time to go for a walk?" she suggested.

I raised an eyebrow. "Sneaking around at night two days after a Death Eater attack? Brilliant idea."

"But I asked Slughorn if Hogwarts would be safe anymore. He said the Aurors tripled the protection on the Hogwarts castle and grounds. We're actually safer sneaking out now than we ever have been."

She had a point. And I had spent so much time sitting in this common room the past couple of days, and the room was starting to have a suffocating quality to it. Maybe it'd be a good idea after all. I tried to ignore the voice in the back of my head that sounded a lot like Professor McGonagall scolding me – something she was bound to do if we got caught. "Okay… where do you want to go?"

"I don't know, the kitchens? I'm sort of hungry. Or outside."

"Outside sounds good." I left my books and quills in a pile on the table, and we skipped up the three carpeted steps up to the door out of the common room, speeding through the corridors until we reached the comparative safety of outside.

We wandered over to the lake, chatting about mundane things, and I started when I noticed a lone figure sitting under a nearby tree. A petite, shaking figure, hugging her knees to her chest. It was Althea.

Mandy and I shared a glance, and then headed over to the tree where Althea was sitting. She looked up when we were only a few feet away, and her red, puffy eyes suggested she'd been out here crying for hours.

Althea had become even more withdrawn than usual since the attack; I never even saw her in the library anymore. Understandably, she'd taken the potential loss of her fellow sixth year Hufflepuff very badly.

"Are you okay?" I asked, and then wished I hadn't – of course she wasn't okay. It was a stupid question, but I hadn't the faintest idea what to say to her. Althea ignored me and went back to staring out over the lake.

It hurt to see Althea like this. Why did something like this have to happen to her? She had never said an unkind word to anyone, and took all setbacks with grace and patience. But it seemed she had reached her breaking point, and had pushed everyone away now that one of her friends was possibly on her deathbed at St. Mungo's.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, sitting down beside her and putting my arm around her shoulders. "I wish I could do something. I understand how hard this must be—"

"No. You _don't_ understand," said Althea forcefully, pulling away from my arm. I hadn't been expecting that, and pulled my arm back to my side as she continued. "You have _no_ idea what it's like to live every day in fear because you're Muggle-born; that's what it's like for me. You Slytherins have nothing to fear in all of this. You're the one house that's off the hook."

I stared at her, feeling defensive but with nothing to say for myself – not when she was like this. But Mandy said, "You're right – we don't know exactly what that's like. But everyone is at risk here, even Slytherins; I'm a Slytherin, and Death Eaters tried to kill my parents this summer for stuff my mum wrote in the Daily Prophet."

Althea sniffed. "Artemis is one of my best friends. And they say she's… that she might not be coming back."

"The Healers are doing everything they can," I assured her. "She's in good hands."

"You don't know that. What if they can't do anything? And don't give me that sugar coated sympathy. I know what they were saying about her. What happens if she's gone?"

"Then she'd want you to be happy," said Mandy. "It wouldn't mean you have no one left. You're in Hufflepuff – the house that's composed of the nicest people at Hogwarts. Don't be afraid to reach out to them; you don't have to go through everything alone. You're surrounded by people who love you and we are all here for you."

"It's just… so hard," said Althea, her voice calmer now. "I don't know what to do anymore. I'm scared."

"Me too," I said. "I think everyone is. But we're here for you if you need."

"I want to be alone for a while," she said eventually.

Mandy and I looked at each other over Althea's head. "Okay," I said, and we stood up; I felt bad about leaving her there by the tree, but there was nothing else we could do for her. If she needed to be alone, we'd let her. I just hoped she'd stop pushing everyone away eventually.

"Let's just go back in," Mandy muttered as we left, and we headed back to the castle in silence, my mind overcome with worries about Voldemort, and whether people I loved would get hurt.

No one was going to make it out of this war without losing someone. Everyone had already been touched by the war and lost people in some way. I had lost my family – not because anyone had died, but because the war had split us apart, putting us on opposing sides. It could be a long time before I spoke with any of them again. How much more would we have to lose before it was over? What would happen after we left Hogwarts forever at the end of the year?

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry that chapter was so long - it just kept writing itself and wouldn't stop! Also, I do not own the song "Carry That Weight" by the Beatles, or the book** ** _Charlotte's Web_** **by E. B. White.**


	26. Discoveries

Charlotte and I stood in the queue, waiting for Filch to check our names against the list of students allowed into Hogsmeade and scan us over with some magical Dark detector before letting us out. Mandy was going with Remus, whom she'd asked about a week ago. Well, she hadn't really _asked_ , she had simply informed him that they were going, and Remus, probably out of sheer surprise, had agreed. I had not asked Sirius. There was a reason I was not a Gryffindor: I wasn't brave enough to ask someone out.

There was more to it than that, though. I still cringed when I thought of how I acted in the Great Hall and had lost my head. It was also pretty clear to me that he would have said no if I had asked. If he'd wanted to go with me, he would have asked. But lately he always seemed to have somewhere to be off to whenever I was around. He acted a lot more detached from people in general, like he just didn't really want to be around anyone other than James, Remus, and Peter.

I wasn't concerned about this change in his behaviour, though. He did that sometimes; he'd sort of get into a strop and no one would really be able to get him out of it except his three best friends. And me, a couple of times – but it was possible that this time I was the reason for his bad mood. It was sort of arrogant for me to think that, though; he could be annoyed about any number of things, not because I'd been mean to him. I decided to leave him be.

I watched with amusement as Camilla Rookwood, who was only a second year, tried to sneak out, but Filch caught her. Camilla gave me a surly look when she caught me watching, and slunk back down the corridor. A few people behind her in the queue, Charlotte and I finally made it out of the castle and towards Hogsmeade.

In the High Street, Aurors from the Ministry were positioned near a few of the shops, probably as a precaution given what had happened at Hogwarts two weeks ago. There were a few other people hovering outside other shops, trying to sell amulets and potions to ward off Dark curses, and warily eyeing the Aurors. We walked by one hag who leered at me, reached into a wheelbarrow and held up a large rock on a chain, insisting that it would protect me from the Imperius Curse. Charlotte glared at her and we walked away, just in time to see an Auror start walking towards the hag. The hag took three steps away with her wheelbarrow, and when the Auror had stopped, the hag tried to continue her black market sales a bit farther down the road.

Charlotte and I walked into the Three Broomsticks, got some butterbeers and sat down at an empty table, doing little but watching the people around us. Sometimes, you didn't need conversation – it was enough to sit there in silence with a good friend, occasionally pointing out silly things people were doing. I took a sip of my butterbeer, tapped Charlotte's arm and pointed to a table in the corner, where Vanessa Saltz was sitting, showing a small pink bottle to two of her friends.

"It's probably a fake potion supposed to keep Death Eaters away," I suggested. "I bet she'd be stupid enough to buy something from that hag outside."

"No, it looks like a love potion," said Charlotte.

"Looks like a waste of money, whatever it is," I said. "Filch isn't letting that back in the castle."

"Unless she uses it on him," she said. We both laughed at the revolting idea of Vanessa using love potions on Filch, until Charlotte abruptly ended my laughter when she provided me with a new insight into Vanessa's life. "I heard her and Lydia talking in the loo the other day," she said. "Did you know Vanessa's dad died?"

"No," I said, shocked. "What happened?"

"Death Eaters," said Charlotte, shrugging.

Charlotte didn't seem too concerned, but despite my deep dislike for Vanessa, I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. I looked back at Vanessa's table, noticing for the first time that her usually perfect makeup was a bit smudged, and she looked more drawn than usual. Her characteristally fake smile was still there as always, but now rather than giving the air of superficiality, that smile looked like a mask hiding a broken young woman just trying to keep herself together. I didn't want to think about it any more, so I let my eyes drift around the room.

Sirius was sitting with Carol Whitby. She was was leaning forward on the table, hanging on to his every word, but Sirius didn't look very happy. At one point when I was looking over at them, I accidentally met Sirius's eyes, and hurriedly looked away.

Althea Seward walked in, surrounded by a huge pack of Hufflepuffs that for the past two weeks had accompanied her wherever she went. They'd all wanted to help her out since her friend Artemis was still in a coma at St. Mungo's, and Althea seemed to be improving thanks to their constant moral support. Having a lot of people around with words of comfort seemed to be just what she'd needed to make it through a hard time.

"You ever thought of being an Auror when you leave Hogwarts?" Charlotte asked me. She was looking out the window beside our table at one of the Auror guards who was essentially blocking our view of the street by standing there on watch.

"Not really," I said. "Not if I'd be just standing around watching Hogwarts students buy Dungbombs."

"I wonder if anyone ever tells them that's what three years of training gets them."

I smiled humourlessly. "Well, that and running after Voldemort and bringing down Death Eaters. I'm not really cut out for that kind of work, or for war. I don't want to kill anyone, and I don't want to be dead in five years. So I think after Hogwarts I'm just going to run – I'll go to another country."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I've been thinking about after Hogwarts, too – since it's seventh year and we're supposed to have an idea by now – I think I want to be an Obliviator."

"That's great, Charlotte! Why an Obliviator?"

"I'd be good at it. And you have to be able to come up with good enough stories to tell Muggles when some sort of magical accident happens – I could probably do that in my sleep. It'd be fun."

"I could see it," I said, smiling. It was only too easy to imagine Charlotte making up outlandish yet somehow believable stories to feed Muggles to cover up blatant magic. "That's great you've got it figured out – especially considering that only last year you were still considering just having fifty cats and spying on your neighbours."

"Who says I can't still do that too?" she asked.

"My, aren't you ambitious," I said. "Seriously though, at least for you, life after Hogwarts isn't just a scary unknown; you've got a plan. I'll probably end up being one of those dodgy people who sells fake amulets."

She laughed. "I thought you wanted to research magic?"

"That's right. I don't know how you become an Unspeakable though. There's so much mystery around it that I don't even know how to find out anything about it. Do you think they study space too? In Ancient Runes this week, we just started a unit on hieroglyphs about planets, and I love it, it's fascinating."

"You've been watching that Muggle television programme too much. The one Mandy likes, about the Healer who travels through space in a box—"

"Doctor, not Healer," I corrected her, laughing. "And that's not the reason why I think space is interesting!"

Charlotte grinned and set her empty butterbeer on the table. "You want to head to Zonko's?"

The two of us left the Three Broomsticks and continued walking around the town. The street suddenly began to feel very cold – much colder than it should have done for early October. It wasn't a normal chill; it felt like it was sweeping in from behind me. I pulled my cloak tighter around me and looked over my shoulder to see a dementor in the middle of the street, and whirled the rest of the way around so I was facing it. It was emitting a rattling noise that sounded like dying breath.

"What is that doing here?" I cried. I stepped backwards to get away from it until I ran into someone, and then only stood there watching it glide up the street. As it drew nearer, I heard Dad's voice shouting at me, and Nathan trying to defend the Death Eaters. The sight of Hogsmeade High Street began to fade from my view as I withdrew into my memories. Mum's voice echoed in my head, sadly asking if I was leaving.

I felt a hand grip my arm and looked up to see Charlotte, looking terrified. I had never seen an expression like that on her face before. "Do something!" she wailed, pointing. "Don't let it get close enough to kiss you!"

The dementor was now less than ten feet from us. That was close enough – I certainly didn't want it to suck out my soul through the Dementor's Kiss. I blocked my father's voice from my mind and summoned all my strength to send a Patronus at the dementor.

A wispy horse charged at the dementor, but dissolved just as it got close enough. I stared at where my Patronus had vanished, feeling just as weak as I had that day I'd left home. "I can't!" I cried.

Someone behind us – one of the people I'd run into – sent another Patronus, but it met the same fate and vanished before it could reach the dementor. Suddenly, from the opposite direction, a bright white stag sped towards the dementor. The dementor fell back when the stag's antlers collided with it, and then the dementor disappeared. I stood up on shaky legs, looking for the Auror that had cast the Patronus, but only saw James, Sirius, and Peter standing together.

The Aurors responsible must have cast the Patronus while standing just inside the post office, because a few seconds later two Aurors appeared and approached the Gryffindors. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked back around to face two boys: a tall, dark-skinned Hufflepuff I was pretty sure was called Octavius Pepper, and Inigo Imago, a ginger-haired Ravenclaw who was in Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts with me.

"You all right?" asked Pepper. I eyed his hand on my arm, then realised I was standing on his foot.

"Sorry," I said, stepping away, and then I helped Charlotte up, her face still chalk white. Several other people were standing nearby and getting to their feet again after clinging together in a group when the dementor showed up.

"It's just one thing after another, isn't it?" asked Pepper. "First Death Eaters at school, then a dementor in Hogsmeade…"

"That's even with Aurors here too," I pointed out.

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but they weren't much use."

"They got rid of the dementor, I'd say that's a lot of help," said Imago.

Octavius Pepper shook his head. "No, that was James Potter."

"Really?" Lily, who had been standing with Mary about a foot away, paused in the middle of wiping sweat off her forehead when she heard Pepper's words. "Potter?" she asked. "That Patronus… that was James?"

"Yeah, I saw him," said Pepper. Lily stared at the Aurors and the Gryffindor boys, stunned. One of the Aurors shook James's hand and then the two of them departed. The three Gryffindors continued standing there; I couldn't hear what they were saying, but Sirius gestured towards the post office, an eager look on his face.

"That was impressive, I'm going to have to ask him about that later," I told Charlotte.

She didn't respond. I turned to find her telling the redheaded Ravenclaw the story of Vanessa Saltz buying love potions from a hag in the street.

"I used to date her, you know," said Imago.

Charlotte's eyes grew to the size of saucers as she goggled at him. "Why?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

He shrugged. "She probably used a love potion," he said. "I liked her at the time, but it didn't take me too long to realise what a tart she is."

I laughed to myself, and then, because I didn't really have anything to do with their conversation, I made small talk with Octavius while I waited for Charlotte to finish. I saw Sirius, James, and Peter exit the post office, grinning and crowding around a large parcel they were trying unsuccessfully to conceal. I suspected some sort of prank equipment they'd had to order that wasn't available at Zonko's. After about half an hour, when we were still standing out in the street, I decided it was impossible for Charlotte to actually finish talking. I tapped her on the shoulder and tilted my head, gesturing to Zonko's, where we had been planning to go before we got detained in the street by the dementor and then by the two boys.

However, the boys said they were on their way to Zonko's too, and they joined us. Charlotte's and my afternoon out ended up becoming a double date of sorts; Charlotte and Inigo were chatting away to each other the whole time; apparently he was really into Divination and was almost as talkative as Charlotte, so they got on very well. This left Octavius and me the afternoon to get to know one another. He was a rather nice guy, so I didn't really mind the change in plans for the day. The one flaw in an otherwise lovely afternoon happened when we were heading back and found the three Gryffindors.

I stopped to say hello. James and Peter greeted me; Sirius initially smiled but then became rather annoyed and did nothing except glare. I chose to ignore this and mentioned to James that I'd seen his amazing Patronus drive away that dementor earlier in the day.

"Oh, it was nothing," he said with a wave of his hand.

"Right, nothing, just some of the most complex magic we've learned at Hogwarts. Nothing at all." I laughed, shaking my head.

James shrugged. "I got lucky, I suppose. The dementors are pretty well outside Ministry control by now. Some have escaped, as you know, but these ones were meant to be here in addition to the Aurors in protecting everyone from Death Eaters. They were supposed to be outside the town, but they were probably drawn in by the happiness of all the students here. At least that's what the Aurors told me afterwards – I guess they were inside and had no idea until the dementor was here."

"Why do the Aurors even get paid?" Sirius asked James. "You and I could do a better job than they did."

Peter coughed, looking sideways at Sirius as if hoping Sirius would rephrase to include Peter in his plans for who would become great Aurors. He kept patting one of the pockets of his cloak nervously – I would have bet ten Galleons that they had shrunk their mystery parcel and Peter was carrying it.

"Well, we'd better be off," I said. "Have to get away from whatever it is you got through owl order and are planning to let loose on the school."

James grinned, Peter put his hand over his pocket again and looked innocently confused, and Sirius just scowled at me coldly. His eyes flicked up to where Octavius was standing next to me, and then he went back to frowning at nothing in particular. Maybe he didn't like Octavius – but he seemed nice enough, and who was Sirius to judge who I became friends with? Octavius and I started walking back, a process that was impeded when Octavius tripped and landed on his back like a turtle. Moments after Octavius stood up, he fell to the ground again. Suspicious, I glanced back towards the Gryffindors to see Sirius hastily putting his wand away.

"Charming friends you've got," grumbled Octavius.

"Sorry," I muttered, hoping this wouldn't happen again. I was never going to make friends if Sirius kept attacking them.

* * *

"How was your date, Mandy?" I asked at dinner as I reached around her for a dish on the table.

"It was great," she growled irritably, dishing some roast potatoes onto her plate with more force than was necessary.

"Right, sounds like it," said Charlotte.

Mandy sighed. "It was, though, and that's what's so frustrating! Remus and I had a great time. But then he made it so clear he didn't want anything else – he doesn't want to go out with me again. It's like he's afraid to get too close."

"I'm sorry," I said sincerely.

"I just can't figure out why! He acted as if he likes me, but then he just changed his mind."

"Bad date?" asked Rachel, as she and Alanna moved in to sit by us. Mandy eyed her warily; Rachel never really talked to us except to gloat about things. I didn't mind Alanna, but you rarely got one without the other, as they were nearly as close as Mandy and I were, only the two of them were a lot more into blood purity.

"It was okay," said Mandy, but I don't think either Rachel or Alanna were convinced.

"That's what you get for going with a Gryffindor," said Alanna. "Sorry. Better luck next time."

"How was your day?" Charlotte asked. "We didn't see either of you in Hogsmeade."

"I was writing a paper for Defence Against the Dark Arts," said Alanna. "I finished it, but I'm wondering if I should have let myself take a day off instead!"

"That paper was a waste of time, in my opinion," Rachel agreed. "You'll do well on it, I'm sure, but it's a useless subject to begin with!" She turned back to face Mandy, Charlotte and me. "And I went to Hogsmeade with Evan."

I choked on my pumpkin juice a little. There was only one Evan I knew – someone I wasn't particularly fond of, who spent most of his time inventing Dark Magic jinxes with people like Mulciber and Snape. "Evan Rosier?" I asked once I had finished coughing.

"Of course. We've been together a few weeks now. In Hogsmeade today he bought me a new set of peacock-feather quills and some of Honeydukes' best chocolates." She smiled smugly.

"Well, Galleons are the way to a girl's heart," said Charlotte.

Rachel rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. "If you're nice to me, I _might_ share the chocolate. Oh, and if you need another reason to be nice – Evan is good friends with Darian Wilkes, and so I've figured out that Darian really fancies you, but I think he's too intimidated to ask you out." She grinned at Charlotte, looking as if she had just imparted the most welcome news anyone could want to hear.

Charlotte started talking about how she wasn't going to change a thing about herself and she didn't even like Wilkes anyway. I'd heard this tirade before – the five of us had some sort of girls' night about three years ago, and while painting our toenails, we'd tried to decide who would be the future husband of each of us. Alanna had suggested Wilkes as a candidate for Charlotte, and Charlotte had dismissed him as immature and self-absorbed (a very apt description, in fact). Then Mandy had suggested my brother, and Alanna and Rachel started fighting over him while I made faces at Charlotte.

Next to me, Mandy tapped my arm and nodded towards the door of the Great Hall. I heard Charlotte carrying on about Wilkes being immature, so I finished my last bite of potatoes, then stood up with Mandy and we went back to the Slytherin common room. "I knew that discussion was going to last a while," said Mandy, "and I didn't want to stick around while Rachel goes on about how much she loves Evan Rosier. They've only been dating for three weeks, and she's convinced they're in love. You weren't sitting with her at breakfast, she was just rattling on about him the whole time to Alanna, I was half expecting her to say they were getting married. Where were you at breakfast?"

"I came later, with Charlotte. We were in no hurry."

"Meaning, she didn't know what to wear, and she made you wait for her," Mandy concluded astutely.

"Right you are."

"You never know, she might have been trying to dress up just for you. Maybe that's why she's always turning down my suggestions of boys she should go out with… So how was your _date?_ "

I grinned. "It was great."

"Speaking of dates… I don't think it's going to be too much longer before Lily finally agrees to go out with James. I saw her in Hogsmeade today, and she seems a lot keener on James than she cares to admit! I have a feeling she wanted him to ask her to Hogsmeade, but he didn't, apparently he's been paying almost no attention to her lately. And she doesn't like that!"

"What, she told you that?" That seemed very unlike Lily.

"No, she never said any of it directly, but I got that feeling. She kept looking around, and when she did happen to see James, she just sort of watched him for a while."

"It's funny, I've been noticing that too," I said. "You should have seen her face when James cast that Patronus and got rid of the dementor. Lily looked like she'd just been slapped in the face, she was so shocked!"

Mandy grinned. "That's perfect." Then she looked at me intently. "You're not still upset that Sirius went with Carol, are you? Because I don't think it was much of a date. I saw them leave the Three Broomsticks to just hang around with their friends; Carol was with Lily and Mary for most of the day."

I tried to shrug it off like I didn't care.

"You should have asked him," Mandy insisted.

"I told you, I didn't feel like it. He likes to flirt with me, but he doesn't like me. Well, as a friend, but that's…" I trailed off. _That's not good enough anymore_ , I thought. It was only going to get worse from here; the better I got to know Sirius, the more I liked him.

"There's no way to know for sure unless you ask. You had plenty of opportunities – you two are always off somewhere talking to each other."

I scowled, but it did nothing to erase that smug smirk from Mandy's face. She knew exactly how I was feeling – it had been her feeling the same way for six years. I sighed. "You know, even though I know him so much better now than I did last year, I still feel like he's hiding something. For someone who I used to consider to be the definition of arrogant, he doesn't really like talking about himself."

The door to the common room opened and Charlotte, Alanna and Rachel walked in. "No, his ears stick out!" Alanna was saying. I looked back at Mandy and raised my eyebrows. Those three were still trying to set each other up with potential dates?

Mandy laughed. "Anyway, what were you saying… I actually think you might be on to something. Not Sirius in particular, but all four of them. They've always seemed like they're hiding something, have you ever gotten that impression?"

"No, not really," I said. "I only feel that way about Sirius."

"Ew, Sirius Black?" asked Rachel, who had turned up right behind my chair with Charlotte and Alanna; I hadn't even noticed them coming over here. Her lip was curled in obvious distaste – she hadn't heard our whole conversation, but she'd heard enough to guess that I liked Sirius, and didn't approve. I found I didn't particularly care what she thought about him or my friendship with him.

"Ew, Evan Rosier?" I said carelessly. Rachel frowned, but Charlotte looked like she was trying not to laugh, like she was pleased with my comeback. It was kind of like something she would say, anyway.

"Melanie, you can do better than Black," said Alanna. "Besides, he's a lost cause for anyone now. I heard Lydia Carybdis saying so in Hogsmeade today. He's totally fallen for someone – must be that Mudblood Whitby I saw him with. At least that's what Lydia said. She overheard a conversation between Black and Potter."

So he did like Carol. That was why he had been acting so weird recently – he'd actually fallen for someone at last. I tried to rearrange my face into a smile or at least something that didn't show how distressed I was by this.

Mandy watched me with concern, then said to Alanna, "What you're saying is that you don't really know, you just heard it secondhand. Who knows how much of that Lydia made up? I doubt they'd talk about something like that in Hogsmeade anyway."

Alanna shrugged. Then her face lit up. "Ooh, I have a great idea! We can have a girls' night again, and chat and eat Chocolate Cauldrons and curl up in a pile in the middle of the floor! We haven't done that in so long. And we were just talking about this sort of thing when we came back from dinner!"

The rest of us were unenthused. Only when Alanna pleaded us and suggested that Rachel could show off her new robes, and added that she had a new hair-straightening charm she wanted to show us, did we finally relent, and the prospect seemed much brighter when Rachel mentioned maybe playing some music as well. Mandy and I followed them up the stairs, Alanna chattering away excitedly. I turned to Mandy and muttered, "I don't want to hear them argue over Nathan again. I will curse you into next week if you mention him."

* * *

On Tuesday that week, Artemis Jones returned from St. Mungo's, having finally woken up from her coma over the weekend, and so we learned how the Death Eaters had gotten into the castle weeks ago. Apparently they had used extreme Shrinking Charms and flown in on owls, delivering themselves like letters. Artemis had stepped into the Owlery just as the Death Eaters returned to normal size, and she had run to the nearby Ravenclaw Tower, pursued by the Death Eaters the entire way, until they got her.

Artemis had returned to Hogwarts to find herself very popular because of her ordeal. Althea, her best friend, was now surrounded by not only the Hufflepuffs that had given her moral support while Artemis was in St. Mungo's, but also by many other students from other houses who wanted to be friends with Artemis, Hogwarts' new hero.

The best part of that for me was watching Mulciber getting completely shut down when he tried to insult Althea by telling her she only made friends because people felt sorry for her. He went away to a chorus of boos and Twitchy-Ears Hexes from the twenty or so people surrounding Althea and Artemis, and then to add on to it, I charmed a nearby suit of armour to follow him and shout things like "Calvin Mulciber is a swine" for the rest of the day.

We also found out that day what the Gryffindor boys had been up to in Hogsmeade over the weekend. Still revelling in the sight of karma taking down Calvin Mulciber, I turned a corner and slid on the unexpectedly slippery floor. Winter had come early to one particular corridor: The stone floor was now made of ice, and a few suits of armour had been changed into trees. Three fanged gargoyles on the wall had icicles for fangs. I thought that was good enough, but then a reindeer walked out of a classroom. It was very well done.

People were slipping all over the ice and falling down, and even a brief snowball fight erupted in the corridor. This was quickly stopped by the arrival of professors, but the best part was that the professors didn't seem to know how to get rid of it all without creating an even worse mess. Professor McGonagall attempted using _Incendio_ to melt the ice while Professor Flitwick siphoned off the resulting water, but this still resulted in a slippery floor and a lot of water streaming down an adjacent corridor. Filch was absolutely beside himself and clearly didn't know what to do, because in this instance the professors were making more of a mess than the students had done.

I finally got to Potions, a bit late, but not as late as most other people. Slughorn was having enough trouble getting the class to focus on Potions instead of on the icy corridor upstairs, when five minutes into class another distraction arrived in the form of Abigail Corner walking in late. She was trying desperately to make a quiet entrance, but every time she took a step, each foot made a noise like a tuba. It was like having a brass band follow her into the classroom. She glared at the desk where the four Gryffindor boys sat, and then found her seat.

Class had finally settled down a few minutes later, when we all had to actually start our potion. I walked over to the supply cabinet to collect ingredients.

Sirius stepped up to the cabinet beside me. I grinned at him without thinking about it, then remembered the stupid things I'd said to him, and recalled our last interaction when he'd tripped Octavius, so I busied myself with looking in the cabinet for dried snails.

"I hear you're going out with Octavius Pepper?" asked Sirius, a smirk on his face. "Another boyfriend already? What kind of a name is Octavius? He sounds like the most pompous bloke ever."

"That's a bit rich coming from you," I said, not bothering to correct him about my friendship with Octavius. "Who are you to judge who's pompous, anyway? You're the most arrogant person I've ever met. Besides, what kind of a name is Sirius?"

"You never paid attention in Astronomy, did you? I'm the brightest star in the sky." He grinned.

"Thank you, you've just proved my point." I peered into a jar of eel eyes, selected two, then handed him the jar. "So would you mind not jinxing Octavius every time he walks by?" I asked him. "I know it's you who's doing it, and it's rude and annoying. If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were jealous."

"Of course I'm not," he said defensively, spilling eel eyes onto the floor. "Why would I be jealous?" He waved his wand at the floor and the spilled eel eyes zoomed back into the jar.

I began rummaging in a box of dried snails. "I didn't say you were. Not that it matters, but I'm not even dating Octavius. We had basically just met in Hogsmeade. And I know you like Carol, anyway."

"Who?" asked Sirius, looking up at me from the jar in his hands.

I stared at him. "Carol Whitby. I thought you liked her. You went to Hogsmeade with her."

"Well, not like that. I mean I did go with her, but I would rather have…" He stopped suddenly, and for a moment the two of us just looked at each other. Then he hastily turned back to face the cabinet.

Although I was positive he wouldn't talk about it, I wanted to know what he'd been about to say. But he had just confirmed that he was not in fact head over heels for Carol like I thought he was, which was welcome to my ears.

"Mr Black, Miss Hastings, what's taking you so long?" asked Slughorn. We were the only two left at the supply cabinet. Without another word I handed Sirius the box of dried snails and went back to my seat. At the desk in front of me, James and Lily were sitting together. Both of them seemed very happy as Lily helped James with his potion, although I highly doubted that he needed the help.

During class I risked a glance in Sirius's direction a few times, but each time I did so, I met his eyes. He must have thought I was just staring at him the entire class period. I realised I must be annoying him quite a bit, too; the last time I looked he was resting his head on his hands, and looked rather frustrated. I refocused my attention on my cauldron.

After a particularly exciting class period in which Clarence Macmillan's potion frothed up so high that it eroded a bit of the ceiling away, I walked out into the corridor with Mandy and Charlotte. The Gryffindors showed up behind us, and I heard James hiss "Now!"

Sirius refused. He took several steps in my direction to get away from James egging him on about whatever. I looked up, surprised that he chose to come to me instead. "What is it, the Head Boy bothering you? You think you'll get infected by hanging around with someone responsible?" I realised I had just referred to James as responsible… Things certainly had changed since last year.

"That's about right, yeah." He grinned.

I looked back at the other three Gryffindors where they were right behind Mandy and Charlotte. Remus asked Charlotte to tell him more about the rumour that Stubby Boardman, the lead singer of the Hobgoblins, was cursed with unluckiness. Charlotte seemed a bit surprised at his interest in that, but she was a sucker for gossip and happily started telling them all about Boardman's trip to France and subsequent encounter with a Mackled Malaclaw, a creature which causes unfortunate things to happen to those bitten by it. (Perhaps the entire Chudley Cannons Quidditch team had been bitten as well.) As we approached the corner, they all turned left, while Sirius suddenly stopped walking. I stopped too.

"Lost?" I asked. "They're on the way to Transfiguration," I said, jerking my thumb over my shoulder at them, "and we have that next too. Where are you headed?"

"Nowhere," he said, shrugging. I began walking again, with Sirius beside me, in the direction our friends had gone. Puzzled, I looked up at Sirius; he appeared a bit nervous for some reason, focusing intently on a spot on the floor just ahead of us.

"What's up with you? You're acting weird."

He sighed. "Nothing. I'm just…" He shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. "Er, so…"

Just then, a red-faced Abigail Corner walked by us on her way to the hospital wing, her feet still blaring their tuba noises, and this seemed to cheer Sirius up. "Which one of you did that?" I asked him.

"I did," he said with a laugh. "She kept hanging around and batting her eyelashes at me when I was trying to get to class, it was driving me mad."

I frowned. "It was mean of you."

Sirius opened his mouth as if about to say something, but then closed it again, and just stared at the floor as we walked.

"You sure you're all right?" I put my hand on his arm.

He turned sharply and just looked at me. I removed my hand from his arm, thinking I'd been too obvious and was about to get the tuba feet treatment myself. Fortunately we caught up with the others before I met that fate. James looked back at Sirius, eyebrows raised, but then Sirius shook his head and James turned to face forward again. Charlotte was still regaling them with the story of Stubby Boardman's misadventures in France. I was rather confused by what had just happened, but Sirius seemed to be back to normal by the time we'd reached the queue for Transfiguration. The icy corridor had also been put back to normal while we had been in Potions, and with everything back to normal, I put it all out of my mind.

* * *

On Saturday morning, I sat with the Quidditch team at breakfast for the first time, before our first game of the year. We were going to be playing against Hufflepuff today. I was at the end of the line of players at the table, and Mandy was seated next to me, reading a letter that had arrived in the morning's owl post and informing me of the news from her parents.

"Dad says the Prides are losing in the League this year. It's a shame, because they were so good when I was little."

"Your dad's Quidditch team is Pride of Portree?" asked Charlotte, seated on the other side of Mandy. "How does he even have a favourite team, he's a Muggle!"

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Right, but he's been married to my mum for twenty years, he knows a lot about the wizarding world. When he found out about Quidditch, he was thrilled to discover there was a team from Skye. He's probably their biggest fan."

"But you like the Chudley Cannons," I said, remembering her Cannons poster at her old house. "You've finally changed your mind, then? That's good, the Cannons are rubbish—"

"No, my mum likes the Cannons, and I like both teams. You should know that," said Mandy, frowning at my slight on the team. "Quidditch is the one thing my family really disagrees on."

I laughed. Quidditch was about the only thing my family _agreed_ on. We'd always been Catapults fans; despite that I had grown up in England, Mum and Dad were both originally from Cardiff and were staunch supporters of the team. I'd been dressed in Catapults jerseys since I was born; they would always be my team. "How can you like both teams? What happens when they play against each other?"

"Then it's a great game, and I'm happy whichever way it turns out. But apparently my mum and dad nearly broke up over a Prides versus Cannons game in 1955. It all worked out in the end though."

Beside me, Andrew Derrick tapped my arm. "Melanie, we're about to head down to the pitch."

"All right," I said. My friends wished me good luck as I walked away with the team. I felt what was becoming a familiar pre-match nervousness – but at least this time I had weeks of practice behind me, and I was an actual team member rather than just a substitute on a team of people that resented me.

Slytherin ended up winning by a narrow margin. We were well behind Hufflepuff but then Regulus caught the Snitch while everyone was focusing on Smith, one of Hufflepuff's Chasers, dropping the Quaffle and nearly falling off his broom for the second time.

We went up to the castle afterwards cheering, our arms around each other's shoulders as we enjoyed Slytherin's victory. Regulus was walking next to me. It was unnerving how similar he looked to his brother – it was like seeing a copy of Sirius without the charm. That was where the similarities ended, though. I congratulated Regulus on his great catch of the Snitch, fully expecting him to ignore me because Jasper was walking on the other side of him, but Regulus thanked me. Apparently he wasn't bad at all when Jasper wasn't influencing him. But even Jasper was civil to me for the moment – meaning just that he was not outwardly rude, and we had temporarily set aside our mutual animosity.

Other Slytherins from the stands joined our celebrating team and soon Regulus was lifted up on to some people's shoulders as we walked to the castle. Students from other houses were walking up too, leaving a small distance between themselves and the walking Slytherin mob. In a group of Gryffindors just behind us, I saw Lily and James talking and laughing as they headed back to the castle. James put his arm around Lily's shoulders and she didn't even throw it off.

My focus was returned to the celebration at hand when one of the people carrying Regulus tripped. I laughed, and Jasper scowled at me like it had been my fault. Some things never did change.

* * *

 **(Disclaimer: Doctor Who is owned by the BBC, not me.)**


	27. Sixes and Sevens

Mandy had long forgotten her turmoil about Remus and was now dating Davey Gudgeon. She sat with him in Potions now, which was a great loss for me as I could no longer copy her. But Davey probably needed as much help as I did with Potions. As far as I knew, he wasn't particularly bright, but all I had to go on was the fact that during first year, he had nearly lost an eye whilst trying to touch the Whomping Willow, a tree that violently swung its branches at you if you got near it. There had been an ongoing challenge that year to get close enough to touch the tree. I don't know what would have happened if someone actually did touch it – they'd get eternal glory in the minds of all Hogwarts students, perhaps. But we never found out; the game stopped after Davey's mishap, and people decided there were more sensible things to do.

One day, as Charlotte and I were leaving the Great Hall after lunch, she asked me, "Have you ever noticed how Mandy's new boyfriend looks like Peter Pettigrew?"

I looked over at the Hufflepuff table where I saw Mandy and Davey standing up to leave. I wouldn't have thought of it before, but now that Charlotte mentioned it, all I saw was Peter. I burst out laughing. "He must be Peter's long-lost twin brother."

"Oh, she's coming over here," said Charlotte. We watched Mandy and Davey part at the door, and Mandy saw us watching her and ran over to meet us.

"What?" asked Mandy, eyeing us suspiciously. "Why have you got that expression on your face?"

I glanced at Charlotte, who was attempting to keep a straight face and failing miserably; she looked like she'd just eaten something very sour.

"Nothing's up," I said, hoping I looked less ridiculous.

Charlotte eventually gave up and let out a laugh. "We were just discussing how Davey looks like Peter."

Mandy looked over at me expectantly, but I just shrugged. I think she had been hoping for me to deny this and say it was just Charlotte joking around, but I couldn't deny the truth in her statement. Mandy frowned. "He doesn't, not really! Davey's taller. And his eyes aren't as squinty."

"If you say so," said Charlotte. She grinned at me over Mandy's head.

"Speaking of Peter," said Mandy, "who knew he was such a talker? I wish he'd go back to being quiet. Ever since I started dating Davey, Peter has been coming up to chat all the time. It's like he's somehow under the impression that he can convince me to switch my affection over to him instead."

"Probably because he realized he looks like Davey, so he thinks he has a chance," I said, giggling.

" _Peter fancies you?_ " Charlotte exclaimed.

"Shhh, here he comes!" She ducked behind me as we approached the classroom for Defence Against the Dark Arts. The four Gryffindor boys were walking in from the other end of the corridor. Peter had seen Mandy; he walked right up to us and started talking to Mandy about the weather, and then asked her about her favorite type of quill. Charlotte and I exchanged a look. James and Sirius were clearly entertained as well, and Remus just watched other students walking by, like he was trying to pretend he didn't see what was happening.

I watched Remus carefully for a few seconds, trying to assess the way he was acting. It certainly appeared to me that he liked Mandy, because he didn't seem too happy about Peter's behaviour. Yet he was doing nothing about it. And why had he turned her down?

Octavius Pepper joined the queue behind us, and I briefly said hello. Then the queue started to file in to the classroom, and I turned around to see that James had actually gotten Peter away from Mandy, and Sirius was watching me and Octavius with a slight frown. I half expected him to hex Octavius again, and I kept an eye on Sirius's arm to make sure he did no such thing as we walked inside.

"Couldn't you have kept him away from me?" hissed Mandy as we sat down. "I keep trying not to be rude to him but I just can't stand it anymore! One of these times I'm going to say something awful, I just know it!"

"Come off it, _you_ would never say anything awful to anyone," said Charlotte.

I looked over at the table across the room where Peter was smiling coyly and waving at Mandy, who busied herself with getting her textbook out of her bag. Peter's behaviour was so strange; Charlotte and I found the whole situation highly amusing, but Mandy did not see the humour in it. Admittedly, though, I would not have found it funny if I had been in Mandy's situation.

* * *

On Tuesday night, Mandy and I went back to the Gryffindor common room with the boys after dinner. James disappeared rather quickly when Lily asked to talk to him, but the rest of us played various games and things that were not homework. Eventually I convinced Remus to study for Herbology with me, but Sirius came to join us eventually, apparently having overcome his professed allergy to homework. As it turned out, he was there only to distract us, and Remus and I didn't get a whole lot of work done after he showed up. This arrangement also left Peter alone with Mandy, so the two of them joined us as well, and it was decided that no one would bother doing any work tonight.

Across the room we could still hear James and Lily laughing before they finally left the room on a patrol together. I smiled as I watched them. Since the beginning of the year, something had definitely changed in the way Lily looked at James: it was a look of respect now, rather than annoyance.

Some time later, Mandy pointed out that we should probably leave soon because it was soon to be curfew, Lily and James were due back any second, and we technically weren't allowed to be here. I said goodbye and collected my Gobstones pieces as Mandy started walking to the portrait hole, and then when I turned around to join her, I could only stare, flabbergasted.

Mandy had opened the portrait and remained standing there in the doorway; just past her, out in the corridor, were Lily and James kissing, oblivious to the fact that the entire common room was staring at them. Next to me, Sirius whistled loudly.

James and Lily, clearly in their own world, hadn't noticed Mandy opening the door or heard Sirius whistling at them. But maybe they heard the cheering from some people in the common room, because at that point the couple in the hallway separated. Lily hurriedly removed her arms from around James, and the two of them stood in the doorway for a moment awkwardly looking through at all of us gaping at them. They looked back at each other again, grinning but with very red faces. Then James shouted back at us, "Lily Evans just asked me out!"

Amidst all the cheers and laughter, Lily squeezed his hand and led him away – either so they could avoid all of our eyes, or go to an empty classroom so they could carry on without interruption, we weren't sure.

"How in Merlin's name that happen?" I asked. "They were arguing when they went out on patrol!"

Sirius grinned. "I bet they never actually made it out to patrol, and they've been out there this whole time." Then he saw Remus and excitedly went over to talk to him about this new development in their friend's life for which clearly they had both been waiting for ages as well.

Mary Macdonald was standing nearby, looking almost as happy as Lily and James had, and as Sirius left, she came over to talk to me. "Finally," she said. "I was getting so tired of Lily asking me what I thought of James this year. She's liked him for months!"

Peter appeared to be inspired by this display by James and Lily, and he ran his hand through his hair the way James always used to do before he talked to Lily, then strode confidently over to where Mandy stood still in the doorway. This time, however, I helped her out and reminded Peter that Mandy and I were supposed to be back in the Slytherin common room by now, and took our leave.

Gossip circulated quickly at Hogwarts, and by the following morning everyone seemed to know the Head Girl and Head Boy were going out. There was an excited buzz of discussion when the two of them came in to breakfast together on Wednesday. It was weird to think of them as a couple now, after so many years of Lily flatly refusing James's many offers of a date. And now I rarely ever saw one without the other.

* * *

After Quidditch practise a week before Halloween, I found myself alone with Regulus as we finished putting away our things. He gave me a friendly smile – perhaps because Jasper wasn't around to tell him not to. Regulus and I had never talked much, due to his choice of friends, but I saw no reason not to now. I thought about all Sirius had told me, and while Nathan had made his choices, there was still hope for Regulus. "Do you actually like Jasper," I found myself asking him, "or do you just hang around with him anyway?"

He watched me for a moment, a calculating look in his narrowed grey eyes, and his arms crossed. "Elliott is my friend," he finally said. "What's it to you?"

"No reason," I said, pausing to collect my thoughts before speaking again. "Just that you're just a lot nicer when he's not around."

Regulus scowled. "Did Sirius put you up to this? Because I don't need his advice or his approval," he said callously as he looked away, his jaw set. Just like his brother. All that time I'd spent trying to figure Sirius out made Regulus quite easy to read.

"No, I'm not trying to give you advice," I told him. "But you know, I've spent enough time around Sirius to know that you're lying."

He looked at me critically, but didn't remark on my accusation. In the few moments he took to respond, I pondered how while some of his mannerisms resembled his brother, the great difference was in that Regulus's every move, every word, was the product of careful thought and deliberation. His face twisted into a smirk as he said simply, "I see."

And with those two words, Regulus had turned the tables; I no longer had the upper hand. His eyes bored into me and I sensed that my feelings for Sirius were plain as day, written on my face, and that was all Regulus had taken from my comment.

Perhaps Sirius was right; some things you just couldn't be told, and had to learn from experience and possibly mistakes. "Maybe someday you will," I muttered as I hung my green Quidditch robes by the door. "Nice flying during practise, though. We'll absolutely have the Quidditch cup this year."

"Thanks," said Regulus, his arms at his sides now as we awkwardly faced each other. "It's a new broom." He gestured stiffly to a shiny broom leaning against the wall near the robes.

"It's nice," I said, admiring the perfectly clipped tail twigs.

He smiled slightly, but at that moment, Jasper opened the door and asked Regulus what was taking him so long. As far as they were concerned, I was no longer in the room, and they left without another glance or a word to me.

* * *

All we heard from the Gryffindors that week was about how great Saturday's Halloween party was going to be. They never missed an opportunity to throw a party, and apparently Halloween was one of their favourites because it enabled them to make a grand entrance in costume and have even more people pay attention to them than usual. It was really just Sirius, Remus, and Peter talking it up – although James had helped with party preparations, his involvement was not quite what it had been in the past because he spent all his free time with Lily.

I stood in front of the mirror putting the finishing touches on my costume. I was dressed as a tree, wearing brown corduroy trousers and a green jumper that I had covered in leaves. There were also leaves in my hair and all over my face.

"Ready?" asked Mandy. She stared at me as sternly as she could and I just laughed. Mandy had dressed as Professor McGonagall.

"Yeah," I said. I looked over at Charlotte, who was just lying on her bed. "You going, Charlotte?"

She shrugged. "No, I don't really feel like it. We weren't even invited, anyway."

"Suit yourself," said Mandy. She put on a pair of square glasses, completing her costume, and the two of us walked out of our dormitory and through the halls on our way to the Gryffindor room for the party. Along the way, Mandy tried to give detentions to anyone we saw in the corridors who would believe she was in fact Professor McGonagall.

Eventually we arrived at the Fat Lady's portrait that guarded the Gryffindor common room, and then Mandy turned around to face me with a scowl.

"What is it?" I asked. "Or are you just practicing your McGonagall facial expression?"

Mandy sighed. "The Gryffindor password's changed again, and I don't know what it is."

"Oh. We'll find a way to crash their party somehow. Someone's bound to come by, right?"

As it happened, we only had to wait five minutes until two fourth year Gryffindor boys sprinted up to the portrait of the Fat Lady and exclaimed "Diricawl!"

The portrait swung open, and one of the boys jabbed the other in the ribs. "You berk, you just yelled that for the whole school to hear! Those are Slytherins standing there!"

"Yep, and we're coming with you!" said Mandy. She marched through the hole in the wall behind the portrait as the two boys gaped at her, and I hurried after Mandy.

"Hey!" shouted one of the boys. A noise ricocheted off the wall next to us and I ducked from whatever jinxes they might be trying to use and slow us down. But they didn't try anything else now that we were inside the common room and they might hit someone else.

Someone looked up from behind a table of drinks: it was James, wearing swimming trunks and a Voldemort mask. Next to him was a dementor, who I could only assume was Sirius. He was making exaggerated rasping noises, and it was a pretty good imitation, only rather than that dreadful feeling of cold and misery that came with dementors, he radiated more of an air of drunkenness.

"All right," said James, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"We heard there was a party that was not to be missed," I said.

"I'm sorry!" said one of the fourth-years. "I tried to stop them, but they came in anyway! They're Slytherins!"

"Have they not noticed us the countless other times we've been here?" I muttered to Mandy.

James ignored the boys and handed me some firewhisky. "What?!" the fourth-year boy continued, clearly unhappy that his efforts to stop us had not been appreciated. His friend, however, gave up on trying to get us out of the room and asked James for some firewhisky as well.

"Sorry, mate, you're only fourteen," said James. Perhaps it would look bad for the Head Boy to be giving alcoholic drinks to kids not yet of age. This didn't affect Sirius, however, who beckoned the kid over and gave him a drink.

"So what exactly are you supposed to be?" Mandy asked James.

"I'm Voldemort, obviously." The fourth-year boy flinched and spilled most of his firewhisky as James said the name. "See, if we don't make Voldemort look silly, people will be too scared to stand up to him! But he's nothing but a loser who doesn't have a nose!"

"A _powerful_ loser without a nose," I corrected. "But you're right. And your costume is very… original."

"Thanks," said James with a grin. "Yours is pretty convincing, Mandy. Either you did a very good job with the costume, or you're actually just fifty years older than I thought you were."

"That deserves a detention, Potter," she said in her best McGonagall voice, and then laughed.

"Maybe you should give him a detention for not actually inviting us," I suggested.

"You were invited," he said, shrugging.

I snorted. "Really? I didn't realize that 'We're having a party for Gryffindors only and it's going to be amazing and too bad Slytherins can't come' meant 'you're invited'."

"Melanie! Mandy!" said a voice. I turned around to see Mary Macdonald, grinning. "You came!" she said, and hugged me tightly. "They said it was supposed to be Gryffindors only, but I think the more the merrier, right? I brought Maurice along and he's a Ravenclaw, but see, you can't tell because he's wearing my Gryffindor scarf!"

Maurice Zeller, standing behind Mary, was indeed wearing a Gryffindor scarf. Apart from the scarf, however, he hadn't really dressed up for the party – unless his idea of a costume was simply dressing as a Gryffindor. "Right," I said, "I think it'd be great if the whole school could come. Of course, the professors might find out about it that way… And Gryffindor's password would be useless… that'd be cool." I shrugged.

"I love your costume!" said Mary, having probably not listened to most of my ramble.

"Thanks," I said, adjusting a couple of the leaves in my hair. Another girl came up to talk to Mary, who threw her arms around the girl and then they started talking animatedly. So I turned back to the drink table, where Peter had taken James's place; James was across the room with Lily. Peter had dressed as a girl, complete with a rather untidy blonde wig, and kept stumbling in his purple platform shoes.

Sirius wandered out from behind the table, a half empty glass of firewhisky in his hand. "Who wants a kiss?" asked his voice from inside the hood. "Dementor's Kiss, get it?"

I rolled my eyes. The dementor appearance in Hogsmeade at the beginning of the month must have just served as an inspiration to him rather than scaring him in any way.

Two fifth-year girls nearby had heard his voice and began trailing behind him expectantly, each girl trying to get one step in front of the other as Sirius walked further into the room, but he sped right past them.

"Melanie?" He waked towards me, removing his hood; his face looked hopeful, resembling that of an eager puppy. He pursed his lips at me.

I half wanted to immediately launch myself at him and accept this welcome opportunity, but thankfully the sensible side of my brain was in control instead and reminded me that he was joking. "Tempting," I said, trying not to crack a smile. "You know how attracted I am to dementors."

One of the fifth-year girls stepped up boldly. "Well if she's not going to take you up on that offer, _I_ will."

Sirius stopped. "Ah, well, sorry, I've just decided the offer's not available anymore. It's not really fair anyway. Everyone will want one."

The girl pouted. Sirius looked back at me. "Anyway, where were we?"

"You were trying to take my soul away. But really, I think I should be taking _this_ away from you." I took the glass from his hand and drained the remaining firewhisky in it, then coughed as it burned my throat.

"I could have just got you your own drink," he said.

"I already have one," I said, holding it up. "I only did that because you've clearly had enough to drink, if you're running after me."

"How greedy."

"I know, it's pretty awful, isn't it? First I come to your party uninvited, then I steal your drink. You should consider yourself lucky to have a friend like me."

"Of course I do. And it's not just anyone who could look beautiful even with leaves all over her face."

"Stop it, you're making me blush," I said flippantly. I was quite glad of the leaves at the moment, as I must have looked more like a tree on fire than anything else. I decided now would be a good time to find someone else to talk to before I slipped up like I had before. That was my plan, but somehow I ended up standing there talking to him for at least an hour, and drinking far more firewhisky than I should have done.

"How much have you had?" Sirius asked at one point when I returned with another drink. He was sitting on the floor now, so I joined him there.

"This is my second one," I slurred.

He raised an eyebrow, as if he didn't believe my convincing lie. "I think you've had enough," he said, and reached for the drink in my hand.

"You're one to talk," I said. "You can't even stand up right now."

"Yes I can. I just don't feel like it. Besides, it's easier to take yours than get my own," he said, swiping my drink from where I had set it on the floor next to me. He watched the drink table for a few seconds, where Remus (dressed as Dumbledore) and Peter were entertaining a couple of people, then looked over at James and Lily in the corner, and sighed. "You know, standing up there was the most time I've spent with Prongs in the last week. He never has time for me anymore, unless Lily's there too. And Lily's great, but… there's no James anymore, just James-and-Lily, like they're one unit."

I didn't know what to say; I couldn't blame him, and he'd probably continue to be jealous no matter what I said. "I'm sure after a little time, they won't need to spend every moment together," I suggested eventually. "But until then… how can I distract you?" I scooted closer to him. Too forward, perhaps, but it did seem to divert his attention away from James. He laughed.

At some point I vaguely noticed that the room had started to grow quieter, but Sirius and I were still sitting against the wall away from the rest of the party. And I wasn't about to leave anytime soon – I was quite enjoying the way Sirius hadn't taken his eyes off my face for the past half hour. By this time we'd somehow moved on to telling embarrassing stories about ourselves.

"That's like the time Mandy and I went swimming in the lake," I said eagerly, "but we went out too far and ran into the giant squid. We both came back with tentacle marks all over our necks and our arms, and it stayed that way for a week, so we had to wear long-sleeved jumpers for a while even though it was June!"

Sirius laughed, and Mandy turned around from where she was standing a few feet away flirting with Remus. "I thought we both agreed to never talk about that," she said with an amused smirk. She looked at me for a moment, then said, "Come on, we've got to get you back home." I felt her hand lifting up on my arm.

"What? No, I'm staying here," I said, and grabbed hold of Sirius's hand. "We're telling embarrassing stories."

"Yes, that's what I'm worried about," said Mandy calmly. "I don't want today to turn into one either. It's late. And you're too drunk."

"Oh, come on, Professor, we're having fun," said Sirius with a dismissive wave of his hand, knocking over an empty bottle of firewhisky that had been sitting on the floor next to us.

Mandy removed her square glasses – maybe so Sirius wouldn't call her Professor again. "Look, the party's over," she told me. "Let's go."

I looked around, peering over the edge of the sofa. There were a few groups of people here and there still talking. Sirius and I were still seated on the floor and hadn't really known what was going on with anyone else for a while. I turned back to face Sirius. "What happened to you being the talkative party host?" I asked him. "You're not as good at throwing parties as you say you are – you just spent the whole time in the corner talking to me."

"Well it's because I like you. I would rather talk to you."

I giggled. "Really? I like you too."

Mandy sighed. "Remus, our friends are drunken idiots," she said. Remus turned around and looked at Sirius and me sitting there, and came over to us. Mandy helped me to my feet. I turned back to face Sirius; Remus was trying to talk to him but was having about as much success as Mandy was with me.

"You can thank me tomorrow," said Mandy as she put my arm around her shoulders and led me to the door, waving at people along the way. But before I knew it we were out the door and on our way back to our own dormitory. I wanted to just stop and sit in the middle of the corridor and maybe fall asleep there, but Mandy kept walking me back. Around that point I realised that I wasn't able to walk without her, and how embarrassed she must be to be seen with me right now, and so I made sure to thank her at least eleven times for being such a good friend.

Mandy and I walked into the Slytherin common room, my arm still around her shoulders tightly as I clung to her in order to stay standing. I felt a little like I was on a boat out at sea. In a corner off to the right, near the stairs, were Lester, Mulciber, and Snape gathered around something. Charlotte was talking with them.

"Hi Charlotte!" I exclaimed loudly, and removed my arm from around Mandy and started walking over to meet Charlotte. After two steps, I stumbled on the carpet and Mandy grabbed my arm as I landed on my knees on the floor. I knelt there laughing as the group in the corner simply stared at us. Mulciber looked quite angry, and Lester put his hands behind his back. I tried to look around Charlotte to see what they were hiding, but I fell over. Then I rolled back and forth on the floor and continued laughing.

The next thing I knew, my arms were around both Mandy and Charlotte's shoulders as they helped me up the stairs. We reached our dormitory and they got me over to my bed, where I fell face down on the pillow and dropped off to sleep instantly.

I woke up the next morning with a blinding headache. Groaning, I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and then gave up and leant back against the pillow again, not quite ready to get up. I recalled the stupid way I had behaved last night and buried my head further into the pillow. Then I propped my head up again to get the leaves out of my mouth, because I'd never bothered to get them all out of my hair last night before I fell asleep and they now covered my pillow.

I remembered with excitement that Sirius had told me he liked me. But then I thought that it might not have actually happened and I had just dreamed it. And I couldn't really ask him about that to clarify…

"Good morning," said Mandy.

"I feel like death," I told her without preamble. "I'm never drinking again."

She nodded sympathetically. "Breakfast will make you feel better. And water. Let me get you some water." She disappeared into the bathroom, and came back a moment later with a glass of water for me, which I accepted gratefully.

"Thanks." I sat up again and finished the water, rubbed my temples for a minute, and then with a sigh, accepted that I had to face the day at some point. I finally went upstairs to eat breakfast with Mandy.

Amazingly enough, for the end of October, it was sunny and relatively warm, so we spent much of the day outside enjoying possibly the last day of sunshine we'd get all year. So it wasn't until around dinner time that I finally saw Sirius again. We were both walking into the Great Hall at the same time. I gave him sort of an awkward smile, wondering just how much of last night he remembered, and hoping it wasn't much. But he looked rather uncomfortable as well when he said "All right Melanie?" Clearly I hadn't just imagined him saying he liked me…

I thought it might be less awkward if we talked rather than just walking away, so we had a very superficial conversation about the weather, and it felt like there was a hippogriff in the room. Sirius kept fidgeting with his sleeve. It was strange to see Sirius so out of his comfort zone and not his confident and charming self. He had the ability to be nervous – who'd have thought?

After a couple of minutes we ran out of ways to discuss how sunny it had been today, and we headed off for our separate tables. I rejoined Mandy and Charlotte at the Slytherin table, and Charlotte looked up at me. "Please sort that out, I saw you two talking over there and I'm glad I was so far away from you, because you two are embarrassing. You obviously both like each other, so quit dragging it on."

"What?" I asked. I turned to Mandy, who took a large bite of pie. That was exactly what I did when she wanted information from me, and I didn't like her doing it back to me. I scowled, and then turned back to Charlotte and changed the subject. "What were _you_ doing last night?" I asked. "I saw you and Lester and Mulciber and Snape hiding out in a corner."

"Oh, I don't know," she said dismissively. "They've got all sorts of stupid ideas and were trying to get me involved."

"What sorts of stupid ideas?" I asked, anxious. Given some of their other ideas of fun, like using the Imperius Curse on Althea, I was sure this wasn't anything innocent. "It hasn't got anything to do with Dark Magic, has it?"

"No. I don't even know half of what they were talking about, I wasn't paying attention. Lester got a new bracelet of some sort. It looks girly."

"That's probably why he was hiding it," said Mandy.

Mandy and Charlotte continued talking about our fellow Slytherins, but I had eyes only for the boy across the room from me. The Gryffindor table was on the other side of the hall from us, but when I looked up, the people at the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables in between were seated in such a way that I could still see Sirius. And he was watching me. And finally, rather than just looking away and pretending I'd not meant to look at him, I smiled back.

Charlotte was right. I needed to talk to him. I didn't want to keep stringing it out; I was tired of wondering and feeling awkward. Last year I'd done that for months waiting for Luke to ask me out. But now I thought I might be able to take matters into my own hands. Maybe I'd finally ask Sirius out, like Mandy had suggested a few weeks ago. There was another Hogsmeade weekend in the middle of November, which would be the perfect opportunity.


	28. Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town

After class on Wednesday, almost two whole weeks before the Hogsmeade trip (and the day before Sirius's birthday), I worked up the courage to ask Sirius out. I was walking in a third-floor corridor when I saw him. He was alone for once, which made it easier for me, but I was still nervous because there was almost no chance he would want to go out with a Slytherin when he had so many other options. He had even said so himself at one point last spring. But after the Halloween party it was evident that he'd changed since then. At least, I hoped so.

"Hi," I said as I approached. Sirius, looking unsurprised to see me, was putting a piece of parchment in his pocket. It looked like the same one he and his friends always had with them – the one that wrote comments about anyone looking at it. "What is that, anyway?" I asked, my curiosity heightened with each time I saw it.

"A piece of parchment," said Sirius dismissively. "Where are you off to?"

I hesitated. I had really been just trying to find him, and not going anywhere in particular. "Looking for parchment," I said with a smirk. I waited for him to keep walking, but he didn't. "Er…" I began. All I had to say was nine more words. _Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me_. My eyes darted around the hallway as I looked at anything but him. Maybe I'd wait and ask the next time I saw him… But that was what I had told myself last time I talked to him. Even though the Hogsmeade weekend was still two weeks away, the Yule Ball last year had taught me that I shouldn't wait too long. What if Sirius already had plans for Hogsmeade? I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

So I steeled my nerves. "Um… do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?" I finally asked, feeling a flush creeping up my cheeks, my heart pounding in my chest. But Sirius hadn't heard me – he'd said something to me at the exact same time. "Er… what was that?" I said, slightly irritated that he'd interrupted me. "You go first, then."

He let out a small, nervous laugh, and I noticed that his face looked slightly pink as well, or maybe it was just the light. But he straightened up and asked stiffly, "I was only wondering… I mean, I understand if you don't want to, but what do you think about going to Hogsmeade?"

"With you?" I clarified.

He scowled, looking like a ruffled owl as he crossed his arms defensively and gave an impatient scoff. "No, with the Bloody Baron. Of course with me!"

I stared at him. "That's what I was just asking you!" I exclaimed. "Of course!" I noticed I was still sort of wringing my hands, and stopped, but there was no getting the goofy grin off my face.

Sirius visibly relaxed and then grinned as well. "Great!" Then he looked at the statue of a one-eyed, humpbacked witch beside us, and then turned back to me. "So, next weekend or now?" he asked.

"Well, next weekend. It's not a Hogsmeade weekend now," I said, glad I had regained my ability to speak properly.

"It can be," he said mysteriously.

"What does that mean?" I asked. "Are we going to sneak out?"

"Only if you want to," he said, shrugging.

I wasn't quite sure what to say. I'd never tried sneaking out of the Hogwarts gates. Someone was bound to notice. But if we were able to sneak out, the prospect was very inviting…

"Okay," I said. Sirius clearly had a bad influence on me. I would never have snuck out to Hogsmeade like this if he hadn't persuaded me to. Sneaking onto the grounds was one thing – I was still within sight of the castle then. But Hogsmeade was a fair distance away.

Sirius turned around to face the one-eyed statue behind us, tapped the back of it with his wand, and muttered, " _Dissendium_." The statue's hump opened up, and Sirius looked in the hole, satisfied. "Ready? That's how we're going to get to Hogsmeade."

I stared at the statue. If anyone knew secret tunnels that led out of the castle, Sirius would be the first person I'd expect to know them. But this could just as easily be a joke, and he was waiting for me to climb inside a hole in a statue and look like an idiot. "What is this? Is this a trick?"

"Why would you say that?" asked Sirius, feigning innocence.

I rolled my eyes. "No, who am I kidding? You'd never play a trick on someone."

He laughed. "It's not a trick. Here, I'll go first if you want." He climbed inside the hole and disappeared.

"Sirius?" I called down the hole. It was dark and I couldn't see him.

"Come on!" I heard him call. "Hurry, before someone shows up."

I looked around the corridor to make sure no one was coming, and then climbed in after him. I slid down a long stone slide for a bit, and then the ground leveled out. " _Lumos_ ," I whispered as I stood up. "What is this?"

"Hey," said Sirius's voice in the dark. My vision was not accustomed to the dim light yet and I could only faintly see him. "This is a tunnel that leads out of Hogwarts and into Hogsmeade. Right into Honeydukes, actually. We use this a lot to get food for parties and stuff."

"I always wondered how you did that," I said, impressed.

"This way," he said, and we began walking over the uneven earthy floor. "Where are you?" He held out his hand, and I grabbed onto it gladly. We started down the dark tunnel hand in hand, full of excitement, although I hoped my hand wasn't getting too sweaty. I was nervous, despite there being no reason for it – Sirius and I were old friends, after all, and we were comfortable with one another. But this… this was different.

"Is that what you and James and Remus and Peter do when you come down here? Because it's so dark?"

"You think you're being funny, but actually the first time we found this tunnel, in third year, we were all holding on to each other while we walked down here. We had no idea where we were going and we thought it might help, but we just tripped over each other's feet a lot. I'm surprised no one found us – we were talking loud enough for people to hear us miles away."

"How did you find this place?"

"We actually found it from the other side – it gets out in the Honeydukes cellar. We were in Honeydukes on our first Hogsmeade trip third year, and snuck into the cellar."

I snorted. "Of course," I said.

"And we found a trapdoor – so obviously we had to see where it went."

"How long is this tunnel?" I asked. "It goes all the way from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade – that's a long way – and you never thought to turn back? You never thought you were lost, or worried you'd never find your way out again?"

"Well it had to go somewhere, right?"

We kept walking along the winding passage. It was indeed a long tunnel, and very dark, despite the light from our wands. After a while I realised that my face hurt a bit, because I'd been grinning almost since we first set foot in here, and hadn't been able to get the smile off my face. After all, I could hardly have imagined that this day would find me here in a dark tunnel holding hands with Sirius Black as we snuck out to Hogsmeade.

The tunnel began to slope upwards finally, and then we reached some stone steps, of which there must have been at least a hundred. My legs were beginning to get tired by this point; I was starting to feel like I'd just climbed Mount Everest when I heard the creak of floorboards right overhead. Sirius reached up and tapped a wooden ceiling, feeling around for a crack in the wood. We were there!

"This trapdoor leads into the cellar of Honeydukes," he said once he'd located the hinge. "We just have to wait until we don't hear people walking around on it anymore, and then we sneak through here, and we're in Hogsmeade!"

The noises above us receded, and Sirius pushed up on the trapdoor. Some dust drifted down onto our heads, and he stepped up and looked out of the trapdoor like a marmot. He nodded, indicating the coast was clear, and climbed out. I followed right after him and then he let the door back down and slid his foot over it to rearrange the dust and make it look like the trapdoor hadn't been opened.

"This way," Sirius whispered, and put an arm around me, resting his hand on my waist. It sent a shiver up my spine. My brain was focused more on the location of Sirius's hand than on being quiet, and I accidentally kicked a large barrel that had a pile of sweets balanced on top of it. Sirius and I looked at one another as the sweets fell to the floor and created a large amount of noise, then we bolted up the stairs out of the cellar without stopping to worry about being quiet. Fortunately (and rather surprisingly), no one saw us.

We left Honeydukes rather quickly in case any of the staff decided to investigate the source of the noise, and decided we'd just stop in there on our way back. The atmosphere was magical as we walked down the street of Hogsmeade, orange leaves swirling around us in the crisp autumn air and the weak sunlight. We went to Zonko's, of course, and tested out some of their new merchandise for a little while before getting caught. Afterwards we discussed going to the Three Broomsticks, but ultimately decided on the Hog's Head because neither of us went there quite as often, and it seemed like a more appropriate place to go for people sneaking out of school.

It had a much different atmosphere from the cheery Three Broomsticks. In the Hog's Head, there were all sorts of weird people, and the room was so dirty that you could hardly tell it had windows. "I'm surprised you don't come here more often," I told Sirius. "It seems like just your sort of place."

"Oh it is," said Sirius. "I know all of these people. That bloke, see him there? We're best mates." He pointed to an old warlock in a corner whose grey eyebrows obscured half his face. The rest of his face was taken up by an angry looking grimace. That was all we could see of him; he was concealed inside a long cape with the hood on. I was struck with the impression that he could probably turn me into an insect very easily if he'd felt like it.

"I bet," I giggled. "Well I'm a little creeped out by the way he's staring at us, or at least I think he's staring – I can't tell because of his eyebrows—"

"I'll get us some butterbeer," said Sirius, and walked up to the bar. I found us a table, blew some dust off of it, and then Sirius showed up shortly with two dusty bottles of butterbeer.

"That was quick," I said. "Amazing how much less time it takes when it's not Madam Rosmerta up there at the bar…"

"I don't know what you're talking about, I was just hurrying to come back to you."

"Of course, that must be it," I said with a satisfied smirk.

"Do you want a Liquorice Wand?" Sirius offered suddenly, holding out a box.

"Why, what's wrong with them?" I asked instinctively. "What did you do to them?"

"Nothing!" He held his hands up, palms facing me. "I swear, no tricks. Not this time anyway."

"Ah. It's a kind offer, but I'm never accepting any food from you ever again," I said. "I haven't forgotten that absurd Singing Sweet."

He laughed, then took a bite of an apparently benign Liquorice Wand. "You know, in fourth year I lost a bet to James, and he made me eat one of those Singing Sweets in History of Magic. Professor Binns didn't even notice though – a hurricane could come through class and he'd still be standing there droning on about Ulric the Unlucky's historical imprisonment by his rebellious pet trolls."

"He didn't notice?" I asked, sceptical of this claim. Professor Binns may be a ghost who didn't even recognise anyone in the class (he'd always thought my surname was Harrison), but I highly doubted he wouldn't notice if someone stood up and started singing in the middle of a lecture. "I'm sure he noticed."

"Well, yeah," Sirius conceded, "he looked up, really confused, and then he said, 'Please sit down, Mr Brown.'"

"He rhymed," I said, tracing patterns in the dust on my butterbeer bottle.

"Right, so James agreed with him and said, 'I was thinking the exact same thing. We're twins, Professor Binns.'"

I laughed. "I wish I'd had class with you lot. It was always so dull and no one ever interrupted him like that. But at least that class afforded me a few extra hours of sleep per week."

When I shifted my foot under the table, my knee knocked into his. A slight, mischievous smile appeared on Sirius's face as he continued to intentionally bump my leg with his knee. I stepped on his foot. He kicked my ankle, and we both let out a loud laugh, briefly attracting the attention from the four other patrons of the establishment – clearly laughter was an uncommon behaviour here.

Despite the weird atmosphere of the Hog's Head, and the bloke with the eyebrows staring at us from his corner, Sirius and I had a fun time. I told him a ghost story about Hogsmeade's haunted Shrieking Shack, and he tried to spook me as we walked by the dilapidated building. We wandered about the town for a while, with no real direction in mind, and I couldn't help but be happy. With Hogsmeade rather less crowded than usual, we took advantage of the empty High Street as we gleefully ran and tossed a Fanged Frisbee for a while; and aside from that, Sirius had not let go of my hand for practically the entire afternoon.

On our way back to the secret tunnel, we browsed through Honeydukes. This was not a particularly good idea, because we were both a bit peckish, and bought far more sweets than we needed. We walked through the back room of the shop as we made our way back to the cellar. I had never really paid attention to the back of the store before – it had the most ridiculous sweets, the first of which we saw was a chocolate tarantula.

"Maybe I should get that for Moony," Sirius mused, apparently to himself. "He loves chocolate."

"Does he love giant spiders too?"

"No, why would anyone love giant spiders? Apart from Hagrid?"

"I've heard Hagrid has a pet Acromantula," I said. A rumour like this concerning anyone else would undoubtedly be false, but with Hagrid you could never tell. I didn't really know how he'd keep an enormous spider like an Acromantula in that small wooden hut of his, unless he kept it in the Forbidden Forest, which was even more worrisome.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's got a whole colony of them living in the forest."

A _colony?_ "That doesn't sound very safe," I said. "Do they get out at all?"

"No, he keeps them on leads. All right, we should probably be quiet now so we don't get caught," he said as we snuck around to the stairs into the cellar and ducked down out of sight. He pulled the trapdoor up; I stepped in and walked down a few stairs to avoid being hit on the head by the trapdoor when Sirius closed it. We walked down the hundred stairs and back up along the earthy winding passageway.

Before I knew it, we were back near that stone slide that had led into the tunnel in the first place. I took two steps up it and slid back down. How were we supposed to get out, anyway? Unless there actually wasn't a way back out and Sirius and I were just trapped in here forever. Life could be worse, I supposed…

I looked back at Sirius. His back was to me and he had that large parchment out again. "What are you doing?" I asked, baffled.

"I'm seeing if there's anyone out there – unless you want to come out of that statue and find McGonagall…"

I tried to look over his shoulder, resting my hand on his arm. "Isn't this the same parchment you had that told me… er, some interesting things about what you think of me?" What could he possibly use that for right now?

He looked back at me abruptly, his face mere inches from mine, and using this moment of distraction to my advantage, I grabbed the parchment out of his hand. "Ha! 'The Marauder's Map'?" I asked, looking at the title. "You four fancy yourselves as _marauders_ , do you?" As he tried to take it back from me, I turned around to continue looking at it, and he stopped tugging to avoid tearing it. "This _does_ look interesting," I said.

It appeared to be a map of all of Hogwarts and the grounds. It was very detailed, and showed little dots with people's names moving around in the corridors. I located two dots labelled _Sirius Black_ and _Melanie Hastings_ near the entrance to the third-floor tunnel, while another dot, _Veronica Smethley_ , wandered by in the corridor. Every room in the castle was on here, and every person. It certainly explained the times Sirius had known I was walking into a room without turning around, or how James had known where the Slytherin common room was to pick me up for the Yule Ball without me telling him.

I turned back to face Sirius. "You made this?" I asked. It was actually rather obvious that they'd made it; their nicknames – Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs – were all across the top of it in curly handwriting. "This… this is amazing," I blurted. "I had no idea you could—"

Another feature caught my eye. There was another passage out of the castle, on the fourth floor! "There's another tunnel!" I cried.

"Hey," he said. "Can't have you knowing all the secrets of Hogwarts already. It took us years!" He hid his lit wand behind his back so I couldn't read the map in the dim light. It illuminated him like a weird silhouette as he moved closer.

"No, that's not going to work," I said airily, "if you want it back now, you're going to have to argue your point very convincingly. Maybe you could start by telling me I'm amazing?" The lack of light was not a problem; I held up my own wand against the map, its light spreading out along the parchment like a fan from where the lit point touched it. But my attention was mainly focussed not on the map, but on how close Sirius was to me at the moment: the only thing separating us was about a foot of folded parchment. My heart was thudding wildly, and my stomach seemed to be made of butterflies.

"Oh yeah?" he asked with a wicked grin. "All right, how's this for convincing?" He pulled me to him and pressed his lips against mine. I tensed up, surprised; for a second I just stood there with my hands curled up against his chest, not really sure what to do with them, the map flattened between us. Then I relaxed and wound my arms around his neck, pulling him closer, savouring the tingling feeling of his hand on my waist, his other hand in my hair. My wand clattered to the floor and we were left in complete darkness, but that was just fine; in my mind, there were fireworks going off in the tunnel rather than it being pitch black.

He eventually pulled away, though my arms were still around his neck. I had no intention of letting go of him just yet. "Sorry, what were you saying?" he asked. Even though I couldn't see him in the dark, I knew he was smirking at me.

If I had tried to say anything, it wouldn't have come out as comprehensible words, so I breathily pulled him back and kissed him again, more passionately than before. Fiery warmth flooded through me as his hands moved and I felt my back press against the stone wall. I never wanted this to stop. I wouldn't have minded if we just stayed down here in this tunnel forever. It would be at least a few days before someone sent out a search party for us, right?

I had no idea how long we remained in the tunnel, but it wasn't long enough. After one unsuccessful attempt to leave, in which we separated long enough to take two steps and then decided better of it and started kissing again, we eventually realised we had been a while in the tunnel and should probably get back into the castle soon. We reached around on the floor for all the things we had dropped. I found my wand, which was a great help for finding things now that we could actually see them.

Sirius picked up the map from the floor and looked at it while I attempted climbing up the stone slide. I prodded the inside of the statue and opened it, only to duck back down again when I heard footsteps. Sirius quickly muttered something that sounded like "Mister Manage" and the map disappeared, leaving the parchment blank. "It's all right, it's only Pr- James out there," he assured me.

I pushed the statue open again and climbed out, and James, who was walking by, looked at me in surprise. "Melanie," he said. "Hi, I didn't realise you…" He broke off when Sirius climbed out of the statue behind me. James's eyes widened; his expression went from confusion to realisation and he started laughing. I looked back at Sirius and saw just how messy his hair was – it was quite obvious we hadn't only been walking back from Hogsmeade. I was sure I couldn't look much better. "Busy day?" asked James, and whistled to himself as he kept walking down the hallway. I wasn't sure whether the situation was embarrassing or hilarious.

"Your hair's a mess," said Sirius, laughing.

"Have you had a look at yourself?" I muttered, putting my hair up into a ponytail, hoping that made it look slightly less ridiculous.

Sirius looked at his watch. "It's about time for dinner," he said. "You should come join me at the Gryffindor table today."

I grinned. "I'd love to," I said. We started walking down to the Great Hall together, and I felt as if I were walking on clouds the whole way. "Today was really fun," I told Sirius. It had been the weirdest date; we'd gone to the Hog's Head, of all places, we'd both sustained minor wounds from the Fanged Frisbee, and I'd stolen his map. But if I'd wanted perfect, I would have stayed with Luke. Sirius was the complete opposite. We fought, we flirted… there was never a dull moment. And I could be myself around him. So it hadn't been the perfect romantic date, but it had been perfect for me.

"I'd wanted to ask you out for ages, you know," he said as we walked through the corridor. "If I'd known how much fun this would be, I would have asked you months ago."

I was rather surprised to hear it hadn't been just one of Sirius's spur of the moment ideas. "Well, that would have saved me months of confused over-analysis," I admitted. "So… how on earth did it take us so long to get to this point? Because I've liked you for ages too. Since the summer, actually."

Sirius laughed. "For me it might have been as early as last spring; I was so relieved when you broke up with Luke, and couldn't work out why at first. Then it started to bother me whenever you got annoyed at me or didn't laugh at my jokes. Over the summer was when I realised how much I liked you, but then I thought you only wanted us to be friends. I couldn't imagine why you'd actually like me."

"Are you serious?" I cried. How much time we had spent worrying whether or not our feelings were mutual… it was absurd.

"I'm always Sirius. It's my name," supplied Sirius with a smirk. And we were back to this. Sometimes I'd think he was about to say something real, and it would always turn out to be a joke. Then when he did say something real, I obliviously made fun of it. How typical.

"Wow, clever, I've never heard that one before." I shook my head. "It probably didn't help that we kept getting into fights, either."

Sirius laughed. "But I like that about you. You're one of maybe five people who will ever tell me I'm being an idiot. You're not afraid to speak your mind and put yourself out there."

"Really? I always thought my inability to shut my mouth was not one of my better qualities."

"That was the other thing that stopped me," he said, looking rather shy all of a sudden. "I was… worried you'd say no. And knowing you, you would have been really blunt about it."

I was surprised he'd admitted as much to me, and wrapped my arm tighter around him. "Well, you had _nothing_ to worry about. Since we got back to school this term I've only been making a fool of myself whenever you were around! I'm amazed I didn't put you off."

We had reached the doors to the Great Hall by this point. Somehow, I'd gotten Sirius to discuss his feelings, but now in the presence of other people, we ended our conversation. Not that we could be done talking about it – his friends crowded around us at the table and treated us to their thoughts about the two of us, until Lily dragged James away. Sirius's friends all seemed just about as happy as I felt. It was actually rather funny; all the attention from them gave me the impression that they all talked about me a lot when I wasn't around.

Seated at the Gryffindor table, I could see the Slytherins at the other side of the hall, and the first thing I noticed over there was Mandy, who was staring directly at us, her wide eyes boring into me from across the room. She gave me a thumbs up and went back to eating her dinner, but I knew I was in for a long question and answer session the next time I saw her.

* * *

 **A/N: Took them long enough, didn't it? :P Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!**

 **Disclaimer: The chapter title is a song by the Talking Heads.**


	29. Mysteries

People gossiped about Sirius and me almost as much as they'd talked about James and Lily two weeks ago (or maybe I just heard a lot of it, as one of my best friends was Slytherin's greatest gossip). Lily and James were generally well-liked and therefore it was happy news, but in our case, aside from our friends, very few others were happy for us, particularly the female population of Hogwarts; I'd get jealous glares from girls I'd never met while I walked to class. Most of the discussion about us was just people being surprised Sirius Black was dating a Slytherin, and how they never thought we'd last – or, far more unpleasantly, some jabs about Sirius' family and how maybe I was turning him to the dark side.

Mandy, always the supportive friend, told me to just ignore all that, and gushed about how happy she was to see us together. For someone who had been infatuated with Sirius for nearly six years, she was remarkably delighted about Sirius's and my relationship.

But like all things, the gossip eventually faded away when we were still together after two weeks and people had found other things to talk about, such as the new comic strip, _The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle_ , which had become rather popular and apparently tended to circulate in History of Magic classes as an antidote to Professor Binns's wheezy droning.

I was sitting at the breakfast table one Sunday in mid-November with my fellow Slytherins and opened up the _Daily Prophet_ , as always, to see if there were any casualties whose names I recognised or if Nathan had been caught up in anything recently. He hadn't, not that I could tell, although there were two more missing people today. There was one from Muggle Relations and another from the Department of Mysteries. Death Eaters were always targeting people who worked closely with Muggles, but I had no idea what they'd want with someone in the Department of Mysteries.

"What do they do in the Department of Mysteries?" I asked Mandy. "That's got to be where the Unspeakables work."

"I don't know," she said. "That's why they call it 'mysteries', isn't it, because no one knows."

"It's a bunch of blokes who people expected great things from, and then they disappeared to the basement of the Ministry," said Charlotte. "They have nothing to do with the rest of the Ministry, they just do their own secret things. Making Time-Turners, they probably keep ghosts in there too—"

I didn't really know if any of that was true of if Charlotte was just inventing it all. But despite the recent casualty in the department, it caught my attention mostly because of the interesting nature of the work – I'd been wondering for months now. "What do you mean, people expected great things?" I asked. "Do you mean they're not doing anything great? That's probably where they're studying the science of magic. And why is it just blokes – aren't there women there too?"

"Doesn't sound that great if you'll just end up dead," said Mandy, looking over at my newspaper.

"That may not have had anything to do with his job at all," said Charlotte. "Maybe that person was Muggle-born. Anyone could end up dead in this war."

On that bleak note, we finished our breakfast. I rolled up my newspaper to remind myself about researching the Department of Mysteries later, and I went off to meet Sirius.

I met him in the Gryffindor common room and we just lazed around for a while, in the company of our Gryffindor friends. I sat curled up on the sofa, and Sirius was lying on his back, stretched out along the sofa, his head resting on my lap as we worked through a crossword puzzle together. But mostly I was thinking about the special activity I'd planned for the afternoon, which somehow, I'd managed to keep a secret so far, and I was quite proud. Sirius loved spontaneity, so I wanted to surprise him.

I heard James mention my name, and turned to look over at him and Lily where they were cuddling on an adjacent sofa near the fire. James laughed. "Would you two quit being so… touchy-feely all the time?" he asked, wrinkling up his nose.

As if he could talk. He and Lily had been dating for about two weeks longer than Sirius and I had, and they were just as bad, if not worse. "We're not—" I began, but stopped speaking when I realised I had been absentmindedly stroking Sirius's hair. "Oh. Sorry."

"Hey, why did you stop?" Sirius whined, looking up at me.

I laughed. "What are you, a dog? I can't stop petting your hair for one minute?" I said. All four of the boys found this very funny, although I didn't think I had been that funny.

Sirius folded the completed crossword in half, tossed it onto the floor and stretched, almost hitting me in the face with his hand as he did so. "Sorry," he said, sitting up.

I heard Peter clap and looked up. Sirius's folded papers had landed in the middle of the rug when he'd discarded them there, slightly open with the fold facing up like a tent. Remus was flicking cards at it, balancing them on top of the paper tent using levitation charms while Peter watched with appreciation. I reached in between the sofa cushions for my wand, found it, and levitated another card onto Remus's balancing card house. Sirius added one at a jaunty angle and after a few minutes of this it looked more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa than a house. It was rather amusing, anyway. And it only helped confirm my belief that the Tower of Pisa was in fact held up by magic, whatever Muggles said about it.

"Look, it's snowing!" said Lily, pointing at the window. And indeed, large white flakes were swirling past the window, framed by the long crimson drapes of the Gryffindor Tower window. After the nonstop rain we'd had for the last couple of weeks, it was exciting to see snow.

"I think I'm going to go to lunch now," said Peter, looking at his watch. "Who else is coming?"

Remus stood up to go with Peter. Sirius looked at me as if to ask if I wanted to join them, but I shook my head. "Actually, we've got plans already," I told Sirius.

"Have we?"

"Yes. Surprise! I'll meet you downstairs by the Great Hall in about ten minutes."

Once out of Gryffindor Tower, I walked down to the kitchens, then opened up the door, which was a large painting of fruit, and walked in. The house-elves were very busy preparing lunch for the Great Hall tables, but a few of them slipped over to talk to me.

"Would miss like some tea?" squeaked an elf near my knee.

"Cheers, that would be lovely," I said. "And some food too, some of whatever you're making for lunch."

One elf brought me some tea, which I sipped while about four more of them set to packing a picnic basket for me. I chatted with Zinty, the elf who had brought me tea, until the other four came back with the basket. I thanked them and went off to meet Sirius, hoping he wouldn't find this whole idea boring; impressive and exciting things were more his area of expertise, not mine.

He was just coming by the Great Hall when I found him. "What's that you've got?"

"Lunch!" I said, taking his hand with my free one that wasn't holding the picnic basket, and led him towards the doors of the castle. "We're having a picnic instead. I know it's snowing, but it'll only be cold for a minute, until I figure out the Bubble Charm."

We picked a nice spot on the field and I spread out a picnic blanket, then we sat on it and I cast a large bubble over our picnic to keep the snow and the cold out. It was like being in a little glass room outside. Sirius reached out through the bubble and caught some snowflakes, then brought his hand back through and the snowflakes melted. "This is cool," he said as I pulled a few steaming bread rolls out of the picnic basket and handed one to him.

Once we'd worked our way through the picnic basket, I grinned and happily leaned into his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around me. We sat there and watched the snow fall, talked and laughed about unimportant things, shared some delicious Honeydukes sweets, and in general had a wonderful afternoon. What with the seasons moving towards winter, it began to get dark midway through the afternoon, and we eventually collected our things and started heading back inside.

As we walked back, hand in hand, Sirius reminded me, "Hey, you don't have Quidditch practise today, right?"

"No, I don't," I said. I loved Quidditch, but I also loved having days off practise because it meant I could spend more time with Sirius, and any time was valuable time with it being the busy year we took our NEWTs. Besides that, Quidditch was a bit weird recently, particularly Regulus. Now that I was dating his brother, Regulus paid more attention to me; sometimes, but only when Jasper wasn't around, Regulus would interrogate me, almost as if he were trying to gauge if I were good enough for Sirius. I got the feeling Regulus cared for his brother a lot more than he'd ever say. Much like Sirius, in fact.

"I've got a great idea," Sirius told me, a spark in his eyes indicating it was an idea that would involve us narrowly avoiding getting in trouble, because those were the sorts of things he found to be good ideas. "Bring your broomstick with you up to the Astronomy Tower just before curfew. Just because you don't have practise doesn't mean we can't fly around a bit."

"Why not earlier?" I asked. "Why at curfew? Do you want to get caught by Filch?"

"There are fewer people wandering around then, so people won't ask us what we're up to."

"All right then," I said. Only Sirius could get me to agree to something so stupid, but I was rather looking forward to it. We parted for a few hours in which I tried to complete the entire weekend's homework which I had put off, then I went to dinner with my Slytherin friends. Just before curfew, I set off again to meet Sirius by the stairs to the Astronomy Tower.

Sirius had borrowed James's Invisibility Cloak, and materialised out of thin air at the entrance to the stairwell. Together we walked up the stairs excitedly, and once at the top of the tower I remembered how cold it was. "We didn't really think about the snow, did we," I said.

"What about this?" asked Sirius, and did a Bubble Charm over his broom.

"That's great, but I think the bubble will be stationary, so when you start flying, the bubble will get left behind…"

We decided to try it anyway, and stepped up on the parapet. I looked down. The Astronomy Tower was the tallest in the castle, and the ground was a long way down from here. We got on our brooms and jumped – it was a great feeling, especially starting from this high up. There was a half a second of freefall before we started actually flying, and it was quite thrilling.

The only disagreeable thing about this arrangement was that the bubble charm did not stick to the broom very well, so we were left flying out in the cold and the snow. It was still fun, and we raced side by side through the dark sky as the snow flew past us, but after a while we got rather cold.

I looked to my left at one point and Sirius was no longer there. Then I felt a drag on my broom and turned around to see him grabbing the tail twigs of my broom. I laughed and tried to go faster, but he held on and then somehow managed to get onto my broom behind me.

"Sirius!" I cried as he leapt off his broom and onto mine. "Watch out!"

"I'm fine," he laughed. "See, it's warmer this way." He was still holding on to his own broom in one hand, and holding on to me with the other. It was in fact warmer since we were so close together, but the broom was not built for two and we started going a lot slower. However, this afforded us the ability to have a conversation again, now that we no longer had the wind quickly rushing past our ears.

"What were you thinking? That was so dangerous!"

"But it worked, didn't it?" said Sirius. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

"Yeah, but now we're going so slowly we'd lose a race with a fly. And my hair is probably getting in your face."

"You want me to get back on my own broom?" He pouted.

"No," I admitted, laughing. We sailed around for a bit longer, while Sirius, now that he no longer had to worry about piloting his broomstick, tried various warming charms on our hands. And it was rather nice slowly flying around after racing before. But eventually we decided it was time to head back in, and headed back to the Astronomy Tower.

Once back on the tower, I looked over the edge again, out at the cloudy night and the small white flakes still swirling through the air. Sirius came up behind me and I turned around to wrap my arms around his neck; we said a very thorough and nonverbal goodbye before sneaking back down the spiral staircase and then going our separate ways. I jealously watched him disappear under the Invisibility Cloak as I crept through the halls on tiptoes, hardly daring to breathe.

Mandy was still awake when I got back into my dormitory, even though all the lights were off. I found this out when I walked past her bed and felt a hand grasp my arm in the dark, which made me gasp loudly before I realised that it was of course only Mandy. She giggled quietly, and then said, "So tell me about it! Where were you?" So I snuck inside the hangings of her bed and told her about our adventure at the Astronomy Tower.

"Well, you lead an exciting life now," she said. "He's a bad influence on you."

"Yeah, probably," I laughed. "It's funny, you know. We fight a lot, but I think he brings out the best in me – this spontaneous, confident side of me that I wasn't aware of before."

"You were confident before that," said Mandy. "In a different way though. You've always been strong, and held yourself together. That's become even more evident this year, with everything that's going on outside Hogwarts. I'm proud of you."

"Well, that's because I've always had you to talk to," I said, smiling. We stayed up late into the night talking, and then remembered that we had classes tomorrow and I reluctantly got in my own bed and fell asleep.

By Tuesday I had caught up on sleep again, as a result of going to sleep rather early in the evening on Monday. Mandy had done the same. (Charlotte had watched us leave the common room Monday night mentioning that we were already old women.)

We had Potions first on Tuesday. I took my new seat beside Sirius, who was actually better than Mandy was at Potions, although I had no idea how, because he never studied. Mandy was back to her old desk across from Charlotte as she'd broken up with Davey Gudgeon by this point; it was inevitable ever since she'd noticed his resemblance to Peter.

Slughorn gave us the task of making a Grogginess Potion in class, and I thought that maybe I could just dump my brain into the cauldron because it was groggy enough. But thanks to Sirius's help, my potion was just substandard rather than awful. I looked into his cauldron, and it was bubbling just perfectly the way it was described in _Advanced Potions for Sophisticated Potioneers_.

"It's easy to see why your potion is so good. You work _so_ hard," I said sarcastically. I looked pointedly at his textbook, inside which he had affixed one of the _Martin Miggs the Mad Muggle_ comic books.

"But this is my secret to success," he said with a grin. "You just have to understand the code. See, when Martin says 'I think I'm going to travel to India', it actually means 'stir the cauldron four and a half times, not just four."

I rolled my eyes and closed the book on his hand. As I moved my arm back, my elbow hit my ink bottle and upended it all over the table. Sirius only laughed and muttered something about karma. I picked up the bottle and managed to siphon most of the ink back up with my wand, but some had dripped off the edge of the desk and into my bag. I reached into my bag to find a soggy newspaper dripping black ink onto the other textbooks in my bag. It was Sunday's _Daily Prophet_ , which I'd kept to remind me about the Department of Mysteries.

For a few moments I stood there holding the dripping _Daily Prophet_ , and then I looked up at Slughorn who was erasing some instructions from the blackboard. Slughorn, as Head of Slytherin House, was our career advisor, and had not been a lot of help during the advice sessions in fifth year, but then I hadn't been particularly motivated to talk with him anyway. Perhaps I could ask him now.

"Don't wait for me," I told Sirius, "I'm going to ask Slughorn something. I think I've finally got a career idea."

"Okay," said Sirius, and gave me a quick kiss before leaving. I walked up to Slughorn's desk, stopping along the way to discard the now useless newspaper in a rubbish bin.

"Very nice job on this today, Miss Hastings," said Slughorn distractedly as he collected the vials of potion from the front table. He was holding up one which he must have thought was mine, but it actually said _A. Macintosh_ on the side. Of course, it was Mandy's that was good, not mine.

"Thank you, sir," I said. "Professor, I was wondering if I might ask you about the Department of Mysteries. Do you know much about it? Because I'm halfway through seventh year now and I ought to have an idea of what I want to do when I leave Hogwarts."

Slughorn looked up from the potions and turned his glance to me. "Oho, you want to work in the Department of Mysteries?" he asked, clearly surprised. "Well yes, I know a little about it, but of course, there's a lot more that I don't know. They keep it mysterious, after all." He laughed at his own joke. "They study what makes magic work, test the boundaries of magic, how magic works into our lives… it's a complicated profession, and a lot of work, from what I've heard… There aren't very many women in the department, though."

"That doesn't mean there can't be," I said indignantly, and rather surprised at my own persistence at something I hadn't even known about several days ago. But I was irked by his implication that girls couldn't handle the amount of work for that job. That only made me more determined. "And I can handle hard work."

"That's that Slytherin ambition," said Slughorn, beaming as if I were a six-year-old showing him some art I'd just completed and asked him to hang it on his wall. "I probably have a pamphlet you can look at if you want, and that'll have names to contact. Shame you didn't think of this earlier!" He rifled through his desk and eventually found a creased brochure that had a picture of a small crystal ball on the front. That was probably why I'd ignored the brochure entirely when all the career leaflets had appeared everywhere during fifth year: I had associated it with Divination, which I had hated.

I met up with Sirius again in the queue for Transfiguration. "So why did you prefer old Sluggy's company to mine?" he joked as I walked up with my leaflet.

"I didn't, I missed you," I said, leaning in to kiss him. Charlotte made a face at me, but I ignored her. "I got this from Slughorn," I told Sirius, showing him the Department of Mysteries flyer. "I'm glad I took so many classes, because they ask for a lot! NEWTS in Ancient Runes, Charms, Astronomy, Transfiguration, and at least an OWL in Potions… looks like I didn't need to continue with Herbology, but at least that one was fun."

"What, are you trying to be an Auror?"

"No. There's a branch at the Department of Mysteries that deals with Ancient Magic and Space. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds interesting."

"Cool. I bet you'll be great."

It was good to have the vote of confidence from Sirius, because the next week was full of writing important and professional-sounding letters to people in the Ministry, which was a rather daunting task, but essential if I wanted to be employed when I left Hogwarts at the end of the year. With that, and Quidditch, and all the homework I was doing to ensure that I'd actually be able to pass all those NEWTs I was taking, it was indeed a very busy week.

But still, I made time for fun as well. One day, James, Lily, Sirius and I all went down to Hagrid's cabin to visit him. I thought this was a strange idea, but apparently the boys did that all the time; they insisted he was great. I had talked to Hagrid maybe twice in my life before this.

Hagrid answered the door when James knocked, and I had to admit I was still a little scared of him. He took up the entire huge doorway just standing there. But he smiled and invited us all in, and he had even baked something for us. I should have realised when neither James, Lily, nor Sirius touched the little cakes on the table that I should avoid them too, but I found out too late when I bit into one and briefly thought I'd broken a tooth.

Regardless, we had a pleasant visit, and Hagrid was very friendly. We told him about our classes and activities and things he might not have found that interesting, and he mentioned his desire to get a pet Fire Crab, which was like a jewelled tortoise that shot out flames. I couldn't really see the appeal in such an animal; the kaleidoscopic shell might be pretty, but the fire would put me off. James and Sirius, however, agreed with Hagrid that it would be an excellent pet, and talked about how great it would be while Lily and I rolled our eyes at each other. Hagrid even remembered me from last time I'd ventured into the outskirts of the forest, and updated me on how the thestrals were doing.

At the end of our visit, before we left, Hagrid offered us more of the cakes if we wanted to take any with us. Lily took one, although I noticed she held onto it rather than eating it, so she probably just took it to be polite. Hagrid told us to come see him again, and as we left, I wondered why I'd never bothered to talk to him much before.

Being Sirius's girlfriend didn't entitle me to know all his secrets, though – and I discovered that he and the other Marauders, as I had taken to calling that group of four Gryffindor boys after their map, had quite a few secrets. The following Friday evening, Mandy and I went to visit the Gryffindors in their common room and only spent a few minutes there before James caught Sirius and Peter's attention, pointed to his watch, and then the three of them stood up to leave.

"But we came to visit!" said Mandy, trying to persuade them to stay. "Where's Remus, anyway?"

"He had to deal with a furry problem," said James. "He should be around later." James seemed to think this was enough of an explanation, and started to walk away.

"What?" I asked, bewildered. "What does that mean?"

"His rabbit escaped," said Peter.

"It's a really ferocious rabbit," said Sirius, in response to Mandy's and my visible confusion. "Don't want that kind of rabbit getting loose in the castle, it'd be a nightmare. So he's taking care of it."

"Why would he have such a vicious rabbit?" asked Mandy. "Why couldn't he have got an owl or something?"

"Everyone has an owl," said James, as if this were obvious. "Well, we're off. Things to do." He and Sirius and Peter continued walking towards the portrait hole.

"Where are you going?" I asked. I looked toward Sirius, hoping he at least would tell me, but this seemed to be something for them alone. They were off to have some adventure, leaving Remus behind to find his rabbit, and leaving Mandy and I to wonder. Realising I would get no logical explanation, I simply told them, "Well, don't get in trouble."

"That's the idea," said Sirius with a grin. They left, and I couldn't help but be a little miffed that Sirius was keeping a secret from me. But it was probably nothing important. Lily was in a corner reading a book, and didn't look surprised in the least to see the three boys leave. Maybe she knew something I didn't, or maybe it wasn't as mysterious as it seemed. It really wasn't my place anyway.

Nevertheless, Mandy and I decided to stick around, and talked with Lily. Mandy griped about the upcoming Slug Club Christmas party, which was a month away and Slughorn had told the whole group about it already so they could ensure they had no other commitments. I had gone last year and it wasn't as bad as they made it sound, although they'd had to go to a lot more of those functions than I had – the novelty could wear off after so many years.

I noticed the following day when I met up with Sirius for lunch that he, as well as the rest of the boys, was covered in scratches and looked very tired. They must have gone into the forest again last night.

"Why don't you come sit with us this time?" I asked Sirius as we walked into the Great Hall together. Sometimes I wondered what house I really belonged in, since I'd been spending so much time with the Gryffindors as of late.

He looked once at the Slytherin table and then started leading me towards the Gryffindor table instead. "I'm not sitting with a bunch of Slytherins."

I rolled my eyes. A while ago this might have upset me, but I knew how to handle Sirius's frequent unintentional tactlessness by now. "Ah, you won't sit with Slytherins, but you'll go out with one…"

"You're not just any Slytherin," he said with a smile.

The news everyone was talking about at lunch was that last week's Hogsmeade trip, which had been cancelled due to the overabundance of rain and a bit of flooding, had been rescheduled for mid-December. Sirius and I would be able to have a proper date this time that wouldn't involve evading rules and sneaking out.

Remus was sitting on the other side of me and had been rather quiet during all the Hogsmeade discussion. I asked him if he was planning to go to Hogsmeade with anyone, and he said no.

"Well, I know someone who'd love to go with you," I hinted. "Mandy said you two had a wonderful time when you went in October."

Remus gave me a sort of sad smile and said said, "No, I don't think it's a good idea."

This should have been a cue for me to stop meddling, but an idea had just crossed my mind and I had to bring it up. "This isn't still to do with Deborah, is it?" I asked, hoping I wasn't testing the strength of our friendship just by suggesting it. "Because you know, not everyone will treat you like that. She had no right to do that."

As far as I knew, Remus hadn't had a girlfriend since the end of fifth year, which might have had something to do with the fact that the girl had caused quite a scene one day right before OWL week by storming into the Great Hall and telling Remus over breakfast that he was an ungrateful, secretive liar and a monster, and then leaving. I hadn't known Remus well at the time, but I had felt awful for him – no one wants a public breakup like that. But it had been a while since then, and I knew Mandy was too considerate to ever do anything like that.

Remus sighed. "She _was_ right."

"Why, what dark secret could you possibly have that would warrant her breaking up with you in that way?" I shook my head. Remus was one of the sweetest people I knew, despite his tendency to play practical jokes.

He just looked at me for a second, and I couldn't identify the look in his eyes. But he recovered quickly, and said, "I don't eat my vegetables."

"Remus," I laughed, rolling my eyes. "That's not true."

"It is true, I don't like many vegetables. How many vegetables do you see on this plate?" He pointed to his lunch.

"I can certainly see why she was right, then. How dare you not eat your peas." I was glad Remus hadn't completely shut down and refused to speak to me, but I wasn't going to press the issue any further. "I'm sorry I brought it up, anyway," I said, patting his arm. "I just want you to be happy."

"I am happy," said Remus. "I have good friends like you. That's all I need."

My subtle hints for Remus ended up being for naught anyway, because by the time I got back to my friends in the Slytherin common room, it was only to hear Mandy rattling on about someone else she'd taken a shine to. "It was love at first sight," she claimed.

Charlotte looked up as I walked in. "As opposed to Melanie and Sirius," she said with a smirk. "Love at first _fight_ , maybe."

I laughed. "You've been planning that pun all day, haven't you? So who's the new guy then, Mandy?"

"Roderick Cadwallader," said Mandy with a dreamy look. "I noticed him at lunch one day and I can't get him out of my mind."

"The Gryffindor Seeker?" I asked, sitting down next to Mandy on the sofa by the fire. "Well, lunch this week was not the first time you saw him. I believe that was first year when Peeves dropped strawberries on him before we were Sorted."

"Okay, fine, it was a little bit of an exaggeration," said Mandy, pouting because I was ruining her moment.

"I think the love part was an exaggeration too," said Charlotte. "Maybe you should have said, 'momentary-crush-that'll-be-over-in-a few-days-when-you-find-someone-hotter, at five-hundred-sixty-first sight'."

"That doesn't even make sense," I said. "And I think that's enough of crushing Mandy's dreams for today."

"Thank you," said Mandy with an air of dignity. She held up her Transfiguration book purposefully and began to flick through the pages. But over the top of the book, I could see her eyes following Neal Rosenbaum as he walked across the room. I managed to keep from giggling by getting out my Potions homework, something that could be depended upon to suck the humour out of any situation.


	30. Holmes for the Holidays

December arrived with a fresh, thick layer of snow on the Hogwarts grounds, and, as was customary, a majority of students could be found making use of it by having a massive snowball fight. The first big snowball fight of the year was always great. It would start out as a bunch of small groups of friends having individual snowball fights, and then it would evolve into one massive one that involved people from all four Houses.

But as December went on, people started looking forward to the end of term, which meant being able to go home and spend Christmas with their families. Home was Mandy's house now, and I was looking forward to the holidays, though the nostalgia of past Christmases when my family was whole and happy continued to pop up in my mind. The only downside of spending the holiday with Mandy this time was that it meant I'd have to spend a few weeks away from Sirius.

It had always seemed to me that time sped up when you had more things to do. And with N.E.W.T. work, Quidditch, figuring out my post-Hogwarts life, and trying to spend any free time with Sirius, half of December had slipped by before I knew it.

One Wednesday, about a week and a half before the end of term, I was in the library trying to catch up on my homework, a feat that was proving to be rather difficult due to the fact that Sirius was with me. I had actually convinced him to study for once, but rather than doing our work together we just kept getting distracted by each other.

Remus came by at one point to collect some books, and then walked over to where Sirius and I were sitting by the window. He was grinning. "Well, you've got Padfoot under your thumb, haven't you," he teased me. "I can't remember the last time I was able to get him to study in the library."

"I have my ways," I said mysteriously. In truth, it hadn't been that difficult – I had told him that I needed to study, and given how little time we had with each other anyway, he'd decided to join me. "N.E.W.T.s also have their ways of scaring people into studying," I added. "No one is immune to that, no matter how smart you are."

"I don't think it's the N.E.W.T.s that convinced him to study," Remus said knowingly. "We had the same amount of homework yesterday but he was sitting in the common room making ink bottles chase each other for at least half an hour."

"They were playing Quidditch," said Sirius as if this had been obvious. "Get lost, Moony."

"Are you ever going to tell me what those nicknames mean?" I asked, looking from Sirius to Remus hopefully.

The two boys glanced at one another. "Sometime," said Sirius, shrugging. "But that's neither here nor there. I thought you were worried about N.E.W.T.s."

Remus left us and continued out of the library with his seven books, and Sirius and I went back to work. I was rather surprised to discover just how good at Transfiguration he was; of course, I had known that he was good at it, because he was always one of the first to manage a new spell in class, but I hadn't realised how naturally it came to him.

At one point I paused from my work when I heard a muted buzzing noise. It sounded eerily familiar, putting into mind another time when I had been in the library and had discovered Mulciber using the Imperius Curse on Althea Seward.

"Do you hear that?" I asked Sirius.

"Yeah." He looked around, and when neither of us could see any source for the noise, I got up out of my seat and went to investigate. I looked behind the nearest bookshelf. Sirius followed me. "What are you doing?"

In a low whisper I briefly related what had happened last time I heard that sound, and how it was a charm one of them had done to block out the noise of what they were doing. Sirius looked around the next bookshelf, and walked to the end of it. I followed behind him, and sure enough, there at a table were Lester Avery, Calvin Mulciber, and Severus Snape. On the table between them was a pile of useless trinkets and rubbish, including a very old looking book, an oddly shaped rock, and some pieces of jewellery, mostly bracelets. One of them even looked like the blue and gold watch from the trophy room last year…

I edged along the bookshelf even more. They didn't seem to be practising Dark Magic on students this time, at any rate. But why were they so keen to not be overheard?

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to determine anything. After a few minutes, the noise went away, and they were only talking about Selma Yaxley. Apart from the buzzing, nothing out of the ordinary had happened at the table. I had probably been here too long anyway; it was because of me that those three had got a month of detentions last time, so if they saw me lurking again, I'd be their next victim for sure. What I needed was to find a more subtle way of finding out what they were doing. I stepped back and shrugged, and Sirius stopped looking through the shelf and went with me back to our study corner.

"I feel sort of uneasy about that," I told Sirius once we were seated again, away from the mysterious activities of the other Slytherins. "I mean, they could just want to be quiet when they talk about girls, but given what happened last time, I bet there was more going on than it looked like. I'm pretty sure they had that watch on the table, the one that made Remus unconscious last year."

"I'm sure you're right," said Sirius with a nasty scowl. "Snivellus has never been up to anything good."

I wondered how smart it had been of me to inform Sirius about what was going on. If anyone could find out what those three were up to, Sirius might be able to, but he and Snape had hated each other since first year, and I worried that Sirius might now try something extremely rash to attempt getting Snape in trouble.

"We can't prove anything yet," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder as if to stop him from suddenly leaping up and turning Snape into a buzzard. But he didn't go anywhere. I pulled my Transfiguration textbook back onto my lap and we returned to the studying we had been doing, although now I was listening intently for any noise out of the ordinary.

* * *

A week before the end of term, I sat in the common room composing an application letter for the three-year training course I'd have to take in the Department of Mysteries following Hogwarts. Gathered around me were a few crumpled bits of parchment, remnants of previous drafts of the application, and when I heard Mandy enter the room talking, I sighed and put my quill down, careful to not leave a blot of ink in what was so far proving to be an excellent fifth try to this letter.

"The Hinkypunks have a new album out," said Mandy, sitting in a chair beside me, and then leant forwards intently to read my application letter.

"Is it any good?"

"What, the album or your letter?"

I laughed. "Well, I was asking about the album, but if you see any issues with this letter, please let me know."

She sat back up. "It's great. The new saw player is the best part. She's so good."

I shook my head. "I can't believe you listened to it without me."

"I couldn't wait! You would do the same in my place," said Mandy. "Anyway, they're touring in the spring and we can see them together."

"Over the Easter holiday! Perfect. We also have to go on that hiking trip in the mountains. I can't wait."

"Don't get ahead of yourself. You're not allowed to be excited about the spring until after Christmas."

"Yeah, well first I've got to finish this," I said, gesturing to my letter.

"All right," said Mandy, standing up. "Good luck. I still can't believe you're applying for a top-secret job even though you can never keep your mouth shut. What are you looking at?"

While Mandy had been speaking, I had been staring past her at Lester, Mulciber, and Snape, who were gathered in a corner again, laughing; Mulciber had affixed a thick silver bracelet on his wrist. I performed a quick charm and held my wand up to my ear. The intention was for it to magnify sound, but rather than isolating the sound of the group in the corner, I just heard a lot of amplified voices from all over the entire room.

"That's a great one, Sherlock Holmes," said Mandy sarcastically. "Keep it up. No one can tell what you're up to at all."

"What?" I asked, taking my wand down.

"He's a detective," she explained. "Muggle books, so you probably haven't read them. But he's a much better detective than you." I scowled. Mandy looked over at the three in the corner again. "Maybe he's just getting in touch with his feminine side," she mused.

"No idea," I said. They had always gathered in corners and talked in secret – they'd been friends for years – but ever since I'd seen them hurting other students I'd been increasingly more distrustful of them and even the most commonplace things they did seemed sinister. And now I began thinking about that old watch again. I'd forgotten about it months ago, dismissing it as unimportant, but what if it wasn't?

Mandy left and headed for the girls' staircase. On the way she passed the group in the corner and I heard her say, "Nice bracelet, Mulciber. Where'd you get it from, your grandmother? Did she give you a tiara to go with it?"

They stared up at her disdainfully as she skipped off up the stairs. If they were doing anything illegal, they certainly couldn't draw attention to themselves, so maybe they had to keep quiet. I just wished I knew what it was they were doing.

* * *

After Defence Against the Dark Arts on Monday afternoon was the last Slytherin Quidditch practise of the term. The other three houses had each reserved one of the other days for their practises, and then we'd all be gone on Friday. Usually we had several practises in a week, but all the teams wanted some last minute time on the pitch before we all left for the holidays.

Hector worked us particularly hard since we wouldn't be practising together again until January. The air was freezing, and snow blew in our faces, but these were the conditions we'd likely be dealing with when we played against Gryffindor in February. At the end of a grueling practise, Hector decided to send us off with some fun, so he replaced the Quaffle with a large snowball, and charmed two other snowballs to be Bludgers. Of course, it didn't work as well, but we ended on a good note and it raised our spirits after two hours of hard practise. Hector reminded us to play Quidditch over the holidays if we got the chance, and then, completely soaked with snow and sweat, we all went back up to the castle.

Although I still had icy water dripping from my hair, I was more hungry than anything else, so rather than stopping to change my clothes, I went to the Great Hall for dinner instead. Sirius and James were in the middle of a discussion, but as I approached the Gryffindor table, Sirius looked up at me and grinned, even though James was talking to him. "Hi," he said. Somehow, I'd out-competed even James for Sirius's attention. I didn't know that was possible, particularly when I looked as disgusting as I did right now.

I sat down beside Sirius and took a piece of bread from his plate. "Don't let me interrupt you," I said.

"You're not interrupting," said Sirius. "We were just talking about you, actually. I'm staying with Prongs for the holidays, as you know, and you should come visit for New Year's! Lily is coming for a few days too, to see Prongs. And his parents loved you, I'm sure they wouldn't mind you coming to stay."

I was a bit surprised to hear Sirius say that James's parents had liked me – perhaps they'd missed the considerable amount of drama Mandy and I had created?

"Lily's going to be there?" I said. "Ooh, she'll be meeting James's parents for the first time." I dished an enormous helping of rice and spiced lentils onto my plate, and an equally large serving of steamed vegetables. Quidditch had really tired me out today.

"I'm sure they'll love her, though," said Sirius. "James has told them nothing but good things about her for years."

I laughed. "She's got a reputation to live up to, then. I'd be nervous if I were her!"

"At least you'll never have to worry about meeting my parents, with me being disowned and all," said Sirius. "So how about it then? Are you going to visit me?"

"Thanks, I'd love to," I said. This Christmas holiday was looking better and better for me! I continued eating my mountain of food, and then I started to get rather cold because my hair and robes were still wet with melted snow. I wanted to sit there and kept talking with Sirius, which I did until he pointed out that I was shivering, so I finally left to go have a warm shower.

* * *

On the 23rd, I woke up with excitement. The Christmas holidays had arrived, and today we were going to catch the train back home. I looked over at Mandy's bed and saw, with no surprise at all, that she was still asleep. Slughorn's annual Christmas party had been last night, and based on the amount of mead that was usually present at these functions, I had a feeling Mandy would not be particularly sociable when she woke up.

Even though Rachel had been at Slughorn's party as well, she was awake, having left all of her packing until this morning. She scowled at me as I stretched luxuriously and got out of bed. According to Rachel, it was never appropriate to be happy at this time of the morning.

"You have way too much energy for half seven in the morning," she muttered. "Do you want to pack for me and let me sleep in an extra half hour?"

"Didn't you ever learn the packing charm?" I asked. "It takes only half a minute!"

"I did learn it, but I can never get it to work properly," she lamented. She demonstrated; items of clothing zoomed off the floor, books flew from under the bed, and they all landed in a haphazard mess in and around her trunk such that she was still not able to close it.

"That's not so much the charm not working, it's just that you have too many clothes."

"I would use a Shrinking Charm, but it never seems to reverse properly when I unpack. Especially the jumpers, the sleeves never lengthen again to how they were." She resumed packing by hand, rolling up her clothes tightly and wedging them into her trunk.

I didn't have that much left to pack, so I took my time getting ready. I waited for Charlotte to wake up and then we went to breakfast together. Mandy was still sleeping, but I got some toast for her from the Great Hall. When we went back down to our dormitory, however, I finally woke Mandy up to make sure she wouldn't miss the train.

After that, it was the typical hustle and bustle of all the students getting on the train, which always took a lot longer than it needed to, and always involved at least three or four people sprinting back to the castle a few minutes after they'd left it, having forgotten one item or another. But eventually everyone made it down to the train, walked aboard, and watched the snow swirl around the towers of Hogwarts from a distance as the train moved down the tracks.

I spent most of the train ride with Mandy, Charlotte, Hector, and Russell. That group always provided interesting conversation, what with Mandy's inability to stop talking, and Hector's weirdness. Mandy gave us a detailed list of all the things she was hoping to get for Christmas, which of her relatives always cooked the best Christmas feast, what her favourite Christmas carol was this year, and so on. Hector told us of his ambitious plans to build the most enormous snowman in existence and then charm it to climb on buildings like King Kong. I hoped he'd take a picture and owl it to all of us, but he insisted it would be so amazing that it'd be featured in the _Daily Prophet_ at some point over the holiday and we should look for it.

Towards the end of the train journey, I left the compartment and went to join Sirius. He was sitting near the back of the train in a compartment with the other Gryffindor boys. He hadn't seen me walk up, so I decided to do what he'd done on the train ride in September and smashed my hands up against the glass, grimacing. Then I walked in nonchalantly.

"You could have just said 'hello,'" said Remus with a laugh.

"I could have, but I didn't," I said, sitting beside Sirius as he wrapped his arm around me. "How are you lot?"

It was only a few more minutes before Lily came in to the compartment as well and squeezed in next to James, and all six of us had a very pleasant last hour of the train ride. It was nice to be such good friends with Lily again – what with each of dating one of the Marauders, we'd spent a lot of time together recently. Of course, we'd been friends since first year, in that little group that had met on the train, but since that group had drifted apart, it was only recently that Lily and I were truly becoming close again.

The train eventually pulled into the King's Cross station. I looked out the window, and couldn't help myself from glancing around the assembled people for my family, even though I knew they wouldn't be there this time.

Bringing my attention back to the matter at hand, I got my trunk down from the shelf, but couldn't get off the train yet, as the corridor on the train was blocked. Hector and Althea had been going opposite directions in the corridor and had got their trunks stuck. Rather than fixing it, they had just stopped to talk. I smiled upon seeing them, and I made no move to hurry off the train, giving them a little extra time. That is, until Sirius wondered what was holding everyone up and charmed the trunks out of the door. Althea and Hector ran out after their belongings, and the six of us in our compartment filed out the door, trunks in hand.

"See you in about a week!" said Peter as he stepped off the train.

"A week?" I asked, confused.

"You didn't think James would leave us to have a boring New Years by ourselves, did you?" said Remus, laughing as he walked off after me. "We're going to be there too."

"That's great!" I said. New Year's was going to be quite a celebration. We walked through the magical barrier into the Muggle world and I looked around for Mandy. I saw her waving at me from way up the platform, so I started getting ready to leave and join her.

Lily bade us goodbye and began walking towards a couple who were looking around happily at all the students carrying owl cages and broomsticks. Next to them was a thin blonde girl who looked rather similar to Lily, apart from the expression of obvious distaste on her face. As I remembered, Lily's discovery that she was a witch when she was eleven had driven a wedge between her and her elder sister, and no matter how hard Lily tried for reconciliation, Petunia would have none of it.

My goodbye with Sirius was cut short when I heard Mandy say, "Oh, for Merlin's sake, you're going to see each other in a week. Come on."

I laughed and gave Sirius one last kiss, then joined Mandy. Sirius went off to find James, which probably wasn't too difficult given that much of the crowd of students had departed by this point. Mandy and I located her parents and hugged them in greeting, and then we set off for their flat. The city looked almost as lovely as Hogwarts did for the holidays, as we passed an ice skating rink and wound through snowy streets lined with lights of all colours and colossal Christmas trees.

Once we'd gotten home, now that we were away from the ears of all our friends and alone for the first time since before Slughorn's party, Mandy told me about the debacle that the party had been in her opinion. Even though she and Remus had agreed they would go as friends, both of them knew that wasn't entirely true, and still Remus kept holding back. She said all of their conversations had seemed very awkward. It couldn't have been as bad as all that, because she came back from the party long after I'd gone to sleep. Regardless, I felt a bit guilty being so happy in my own relationship.

But having shared the whole story with me, Mandy felt much better and started to get back into Christmas mode. Christmas was Mandy's favourite day of the year; some years she'd even start a countdown for it in September. The flat was all adorned with festive decorations, and yet there were still more preparations to be done while Mandy chattered excitedly the whole time.

Mandy's grandparents came over on Christmas day (her mum's parents, which meant we didn't have to worry about the obvious magic all around the house), and there was a delicious feast and presents – it was the way Christmas was supposed to be.

After Christmas, Mandy and I passed our days baking more gingerbread, listening to our new records, and playing Muggle games that she had around her house. She insisted Cluedo was practise for my self-appointed detective mission of spying on the other Slytherins.

And even though I'd be seeing Sirius in a week, he still wrote to me. I had been trying to avoid getting roped into a six-hour game of Monopoly with Mandy when Sirius's owl arrived, providing me with the perfect escape. I grabbed the letter from the owl and jumped onto my bed, curling up among the pillows as I read the letter. When I got out a quill and ink to reply, Mandy finally took the hint that I'd rather not play Monopoly.

The morning of New Year's Eve, I opened up the _Daily Prophet_ and nearly spat tea all over it when I saw an article near the bottom of the page entitled: "Snowman Climbs Big Ben Clock Tower And Startles Muggles." The article went on to describe how twenty-nine Muggles had had to be Obliviated after a London teenager had caused a massive snow Yeti to scale the tower. It had not made it very high up before the perpetrator, a certain Hector Branstone, was caught by the Magical Law Enforcement. That was probably a good thing – scores more people would have needed to be Obliviated had the snowman made it any higher.

I tried to read the article aloud to Mandy when she came in, but I couldn't stop laughing and finally just told her to come read it herself. We had never expected Hector's scheme to amount to anything. And he'd even made it into the _Daily Prophet_ , though perhaps not in the way he intended. I was really looking forward to hearing about it again from his point of view when we got back to school.

After breakfast, as I was packing a few things in preparation to set off for James's house, I was again burdened by guilt. I was off to spend New Year's with my boyfriend, and Mandy was going to be here. She hadn't been invited, even though she was just as close with the other Gryffindors as I was. But she seemed to be more understanding of this than I expected.

"What are you doing for New Year's?" I asked as I packed my toothbrush.

"I'm going to visit my cousins," said Mandy. "Don't you feel sorry for me, because I don't. It's not like James and Sirius could invite _all_ of their friends – half of Hogwarts would be there. I'll see you in a couple of days, okay?"

"Okay," I said with a smile. "Have a great time!"

"You too!" I gave her a hug, and then grabbed my bag to leave.

With a twirl I Apparated onto James's front porch steps, and Sirius answered the door. I grinned and flung my arms around him, and he kissed me in greeting. Then he led me inside. We stepped through the doorway into the elegant hall; I had almost forgotten how lovely James's house was. But I kept my head this time and didn't gawk at the chandelier.

James and Lily came around a corner into the hall. "You're here!" said Lily excitedly. "I was just wondering when you'd arrive."

"When did you get here?"

"Earlier this morning," she said. "Do you want to put your bag down? You and I are sharing a room upstairs; you can drop off your stuff there."

We walked upstairs and she led me into the same room Mandy and I had shared over the summer. I put my bag down near one of the beds and we went back downstairs where James and Sirius were talking.

Sirius wrapped his arm around my waist as I returned to the hall, and then the four of us began walking into the sitting room. James's mum must have heard the noise of Lily and me running up and down the stairs, because she walked in, and upon seeing me, the most recent addition to the party, she greeted me warmly.

"Melanie, it's lovely to see you again," she said genuinely.

"Thank you so much for letting me stay here," I told her.

"Of course, dear." She smiled. "We love having people over to celebrate the New Year. And with you being Sirius's girlfriend now – it's wonderful to have you here. How was your Christmas?"

I conversed with Mrs Potter while Sirius stood beside me, looking pleased that I was getting on so well with his adoptive mother. After a few minutes, Sirius and I headed over to the sitting room where James and Lily were already sitting. We joined them and caught up on each other's news from the past week.

Lily informed us that her sister Petunia had got a new boyfriend, who had visited them just after Christmas. His name was Vernon, and he seemed to be a very opinionated, controlling, and yet rather boring bloke whose greatest care in the world was that his car was shinier than that of his neighbours. This was quite a description coming from Lily, who usually could see the good in anyone. But there was nothing she liked about Vernon Dursley.

Remus and Peter showed up later in the afternoon, and it was a little like being back at Hogwarts, having so many of us back together in one place. The two of them had only come for the New Year, whereas Lily and I would be staying a couple of extra days, but it was sure to be a great time.

The hours until midnight ticked by very quickly among such pleasant company. After dinner, James's parents had some of their own guests over as well, and we hung about in that room for a little while because they had the champagne, but eventually we left them to their own festivities. So while they all celebrated the New Year in a sophisticated manner, the boys, Lily, and I ran outside and whooped and set off fireworks the moment the clocks turned over to 1978.

Afterwards, we stayed up celebrating for maybe another hour and then Remus decided to go to sleep. Peter did the same about fifteen minutes later, so eventually it was just James, Lily, Sirius and me – and the murmur of voices down the hall where James's parents were still entertaining a few guests who did not want to leave. James and Lily disappeared for a while, leaving Sirius and me alone in the sitting room.

It had been wonderful spending all day with my friends, but I had really been looking forward to some time with Sirius. After a day of excitement and people all over the house, it was nice to sit down and relax for a bit, cuddling against Sirius with his arm around my shoulders. Our conversation began to get more sparse as I grew tired, and I was so comfortable that I could have fallen asleep right there. Despite that, neither of us wanted to leave and go to sleep; we were content to just stay sitting there. Sirius wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in the curve of my neck, such that when he laughed it made my neck vibrate weirdly.

Eventually, the Potters and two other couples left the large room at the end of the hall, having finally decided to call it a night. They continued reminiscing about their own memories from Hogwarts until they walked out the door, and I could only assume that's why they'd stayed so late, because they were reliving their school days.

As the previously quiet sitting room was filled with the noise of the couples in the hallway saying goodbye and bringing up a few more Hogwarts memories they'd forgotten to mention during the previous six hours, Sirius and I finally headed upstairs. We kissed each other goodnight, and then he went into his room, and I continued down the hall to Lily's and my room.

I tried to be quiet, which meant moving very slowly in the dark, but then Lily's voice told me that she was still awake, so I stopped trying to be so quiet and quickly put on my pyjamas and climbed into my bed.

"Did you have a good New Year?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, it was great," I said. "I can't think of any way it could have been better."

"Me neither," said Lily. "You know, last year I never would have thought James and I would be together now. And now I'm… just so happy."

"I know what you mean," I said. "If you'd have told me a year ago that I'd be dating Sirius Black, I'd have thought you were mad! I'm sure he would have thought the same, too. But Sirius and James have both changed a lot since last year. And so have we."

"It was a bit odd to see that change in Sirius," said Lily. "It was more obvious to me, because as Gryffindors we spend a lot of time together. At first, to him you were just another Slytherin, then he used to gripe about you, but then in the autumn this year he started asking me and Carol for advice! He said he needed a girl's perspective, or something."

"And all James had to realise was that if he stopped pestering you, you'd change your mind about him," I added, laughing.

Lily giggled. "Sometimes I liked it when he pestered me," she admitted. "I could always count on him to boost my confidence. I know, it's horrible of me, because all I did was reject him for a while, but it's true."

"We can't all be saints, Lily," I said, grinning. "So how was meeting his parents?"

"I was sort of nervous, but I think it went well," she said. "They're both really wonderful."

"Yeah, they are."

I curled my pillow and hugged it as our conversation dwindled into silence, until Lily asked me, "Melanie, do you ever think about the future?"

"Well, I think about the high possibility of my being unemployed after Hogwarts," I said. "What in particular about the future?"

"Just… since we're so different from how we were a year ago, where do you think you'll be in another year? I don't know – meeting James' parents just made everything so real all of a sudden, if that makes sense. It's a big step."

So I found myself considering the future of my relationship with Sirius. For the first time I pictured older versions of myself and Sirius in place of those couples staying behind for the New Year, and wondered if that would be my future. But were we serious about each other? I certainly loved being with him, and I felt that we had something special… My mind was filled with all sorts of questions, and I tossed and turned for a bit after Lily had fallen asleep. But my tiredness eventually took over my thoughts, and I finally dropped off to sleep as well.

Lily and I stayed for three more days at the Potters', and then she went home and I went back to Mandy's house for the last bit of the holiday. I learned how various household appliances worked, thanks to Mandy's dad, and he, as always, enjoyed it immensely whenever we used magic around the house. And then on the fifteenth of January, after a refreshing holiday that seemed all too short, we were back on the train to Hogwarts. It was the opportunity I had been waiting for to hear Hector's snowman story again, and he did not disappoint.

About a week into the new term, on a night like any other, apart from the fact that I was actually up to date with my homework for once, I suggested to Mandy that we go for a walk outside. It was really beautiful out tonight; I could see stars glittering through the window above Mandy's head.

"Sure," she whispered, leaning against the window. "It's gorgeous with the moon like that. And it's perfectly still."

We left our dormitory and snuck through the corridors, pausing, as always, to briefly panic if we heard noise, and then out the front doors of the castle onto the grounds. Apart from the crunching of snow beneath our feet, all was silent and peaceful. In the sky, surrounded by clouds, the full moon shone brightly overhead.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes, he is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation.**


	31. The Moonlit Knight

Mandy and I walked slowly along the snowy fields all across the Hogwarts grounds. It wasn't fresh snow, which was a bit disappointing as I always loved frolicking in new snow, but perhaps it was better this way, since we weren't leaving a recognisable trail of footprints behind us.

We stopped by the lake, the icy surface of which was bright and shiny with the reflection of the full moon in the sky above. The clouds drifted lazily, and a light breeze played with my hair.

Mandy grabbed a fistful of snow, making it a compact snowball, and threw it onto the ice. Upon impact, the snowball turned to powder and scattered like a splash of paint.

"I remember when we used to come out here and skim stones on the surface of the lake," I said. "You would always win. I only did it better than you one time."

"I still maintain that you used magic that time," said Mandy with a grin.

"Come on, give me my one victory. It's all I've got."

A wolf howled somewhere in the distance.

"At least you're better at hitting Bludgers than you are at skimming stones," Mandy laughed.

I rolled my eyes. "That's not much of a testament to my Quidditch skills, is it? I'm even better at Potions than I am at skimming stones. And you've seen me in Potions…"

We heard the wolf howl again, but this time it seemed closer.

"That's not a werewolf, is it?" I asked Mandy suddenly. "I heard there are some in the Forbidden Forest."

"No. Besides, we're not anywhere near there."

"Right," I said. "I do wonder why the Gryffindors think it's fun to wander about in the forest."

"Sirius won't tell you yet?" she asked, laughing.

"No. It's fine though – any group of friends has their own secrets, just like us."

"That's true, I suppose." She began tracing some lines into the snow with the tip of her boot. "You and Sirius have been together a while now."

"Hmm," I agreed absently. It had been three months, and recently I'd begun to realise just how much our relationship meant to me. I couldn't really put my feelings about it into words.

"Hello?" said Mandy, waving her hand at me.

"Sorry. I was… what were you saying?"

"Just asking about you and Sirius – nothing important though, if you don't want to talk." She drew an X in the middle of the noughts and crosses grid she'd just etched into the snow.

I reached my foot out and added an O in the corner nearest me. "I think I love him," I admitted.

"Really?" asked Mandy. "Have you said anything to him?"

"Well, no. I don't _know_ if it's love. I've never been in love, so how do I know?"

She let out a short, knowing laugh. "Well, it's hard to describe," she explained. "You just sort of… realise it, you know, feeling amazing whenever they're around, or little things reminding you of them." She shrugged. "I wish I could help you, but it's something you have to figure out yourself. But you know whatever you do, I'm behind you 100 per cent."

I heard the rustle of something running on the snow, and turned to face the noise. That was when I saw it. Far off to my right, near the forest, was the wolf. I tried to recall the distinguishing features of werewolves from Defence Against the Dark Arts in third year. Something about the pupils of the eyes, which wouldn't really help from this far away. And a tufted tail… I tried to get a good look at its tail.

"Are you _sure_ it's a regular wolf we heard, Mandy?" I whispered, pointing. "I don't think it is…"

"I can't tell, not unless we get close to it, and I don't think I want to do that. We should keep an eye on it though… let's get back to the castle. We've been out here long enough."

We began walking back up to the castle. Even as we watched, two more dark shapes came into view. There was a stag, with magnificent antlers, and running playfully beside it was a large black dog.

"Those other animals don't look dangerous," said Mandy, "so I'd say that one is not a werewolf. I told you."

"But what are they doing in a group like that? That's really strange."

"I don't know," she said. "Look, they're coming this way."

The animals seemed to be just running around, regardless of direction, but were indeed steadily making their way up to the copse of trees to our left.

Mandy faced me suddenly. "I think I dropped one of my gloves at the shore," she said, holding up one wet glove.

I frowned. "Well, why did you take them off?"

"They were wet. I'll be right back."

"You can't go back and get it!" I protested. "Look how close they are!"

"Why not? They haven't seen us. It'll take only a minute." She started to walk back towards the lake. But another howl came from a spot not three hundred feet away and my head shot up again. I watched the group of animals, hoping they wouldn't see us. But then the wolf stared straight at us – there was no doubt it had seen us. And now that it was this close, I could identify the tail as being a werewolf tail. I panicked.

"Mandy!" I cried. The wolf began bounding towards us. The stag and the black dog turned and shared a look, which also seemed to be very abnormal animal activity, but at that point I only cared about getting away from the werewolf. Mandy and I left the glove behind as we turned around again and sprinted towards the castle. She could get the lost glove in the morning when there was no danger of being attacked by vicious animals.

There was no way we could outrun the werewolf, so I leapt behind the copse of trees, still watching the scene from behind the branches. The werewolf shot around the dog and came straight towards us, and I reached for some branches on the nearest tree and hoisted myself up into it. Mandy remained on the ground like a statue, frozen in fear as she watched the werewolf and the dog chasing each other. I reached my hand down to her but she didn't take it, even when I screamed at her.

The animals were not fifteen feet from the tree when she finally tore her eyes away from them and grabbed my hand. She leapt off the ground just as the werewolf lunged at her. But the black dog leaped out from somewhere beside us and ran into the side of the werewolf; they both landed on the ground in a tussle. The dog thankfully chased the werewolf off in a different direction. I couldn't see the stag anymore.

"Melanie!" cried a voice. "Mandy!"

I looked around, completely shocked, to find James Potter. Mandy was still shaking uncontrollably, but when she saw James, she let go of the tree to drop back down onto the ground, where she slumped against the tree trunk. "James, where did you come from?" she asked. "Look out, there's a werewolf over there!"

"I know. You have to get inside _now!_ " he said urgently. He looked terrified. "Are you all right?"

"A little scared, but yes, we're fine," I said.

"Come down," James said to me, as I was still clinging to the tree. So I let go of the branch and clumsily climbed back down, ready to get back inside and into the safety of the castle. My eyes were on the werewolf the whole time.

"We don't have much time," said James. He grabbed Mandy's arm in one hand and my arm in the other and started sprinting towards the castle. I don't think I'd ever run so quickly in my life. Everything was happening so fast. And how had James shown up here out of nowhere? As far as I was concerned, he had just appeared out of thin air like a knight in shining armour to bring us back to the castle when we were too scared to move.

Only when we got back up to the castle did we slow down; we opened the doors and all three of us rushed inside. I leaned against the door and wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve. My heart was pounding so loudly I was sure it would wake the entire castle.

"What were you doing out there, James?" I finally asked when I had caught my breath.

"I might ask you the same question," he said.

"We were just out for a walk," I said. "We do that sometimes, but there's never been a werewolf out there… How did you know we were in trouble?"

"Because I saw you," he said.

"But—" Mandy began, but stopped when she noticed Filch's mangy grey cat skulking around a corner. "Uh-oh, look," she said. "Filch is going to show up any minute now." James, Mandy and I all looked at each other for half a second and then bolted so as to not be caught by Filch. Mandy and I sprinted yet again, back down to the dungeons where the Slytherin common room was.

Back in the safety of our common room, Mandy and I had the ability to breathe properly without fear of being mauled by a werewolf or caught sneaking around the castle. A few fifth-years were still awake, working on their homework in the common room, so rather than sitting down to talk about what had just happened, we walked up the stairs and into our dormitory.

When we tiptoed back into our room, we found Charlotte still awake. "What happened?" she hissed, upon seeing Mandy and I, our robes torn and dirt-stained.

"We saw a werewolf," said Mandy. "Up close."

"Were you in the forest?" asked Charlotte, her eyes wide.

"No, we were just by the lake," I said. "I think the werewolf would have attacked us, but James, er, found us and saved us." That was the only way I could explain it – I had no idea what had actually happened.

"It was lucky he was there," said Mandy. "Although," she added, turning to me, "what in Merlin's name was he doing out there? I didn't see any of the other boys."

"I've been trying to figure that out too," I said. "Let's go visit James first thing tomorrow."

"I'm glad you're all right," said Charlotte, pulling her duvet up to her chin. "Hope you can sleep tonight, too."

She was right; it took me ages to get to sleep. The past hour kept replaying itself over and over in my head. But eventually I dropped off to sleep, only to dream fitfully of various animals chasing me through a dark forest.

I woke up the next day hoping everything had been just a bad dream. But the minute I opened my eyes and saw my dirty and torn robes lying across the foot of my bed, I gave in to the fact that it had happened. I dressed quickly and then paced back and forth wondering if I should wake Mandy up or let her sleep, but she woke up on her own rather soon anyway and we decided to visit the Gryffindor common room before breakfast.

"What if they've already gone to breakfast?" asked Mandy as we climbed the stairs.

"Then we'll find him there. Let's look upstairs first."

We had perfect timing, too. No more than two minutes after we entered the Gryffindor Tower common room, James, Sirius, and Peter came traipsing down the stairs, yawning. I noticed that all three of them were covered with scratches and looked as if they had gotten no sleep.

"Hello," said James resignedly, looking entirely unsurprised to see us.

Sirius hurried over to me and wrapped his arms tightly around me. "I'm so glad you're all right."

"Will you please tell us what happened now?" Mandy pleaded.

"You know what happened," said James. "You and I just happened to be in the same place at the same time as a werewolf."

"But… it still doesn't make sense," I said, disentangling myself from Sirius's arms. "You weren't all out there, were you? The four of you are always covered in scratches after you go into the Forbidden Forest. What happened to you?" I eyed a long gash on Sirius's arm.

"Where's Remus, anyway?" asked Mandy.

"He's visiting his mum, remember?" I told her. "She's ill again."

Sirius sighed heavily. "Maybe it's time we told you." Peter nodded in agreement.

"It isn't really our secret to tell," said James, "but after yesterday I think we have to, he'll understand. You have to promise to not tell this to _anyone_. I mean it."

"Of course," Mandy and I agreed. I was getting slightly worried. It seemed we'd stumbled upon a much more serious secret than I'd thought.

"Let's go back upstairs where we won't be overheard," suggested Peter. So we all went upstairs into the seventh-year boys' dorm – the trip upstairs only prolonging the suspense of whatever James had been about to tell us.

The room was empty, and now that we finally had the privacy they needed in order to tell us, James glanced at his friends for support, and then told us, "Remus isn't visiting his mum. He's… a werewolf."

The three of them were frozen in place, waiting for us to react. A few tense seconds passed. I was utterly speechless for once, and just stood there with my mouth hanging open.

"No," said Mandy indignantly. "No way. He can't be."

I felt like my stomach had just been filled with ice. "Not… the werewolf from yesterday?" I asked, dreading the answer, which I somehow knew before James said it.

"Yes."

Mandy sat down on the nearest bed, putting her head in her hands. "Oh, Merlin," she muttered.

The boys looked back at me. I was still at a loss for words. More than that, I just felt awful for Remus. Did he even remember attacking us? What I'd been through last night now seemed trivial in comparison to what Remus had had to go through for his whole life, being unable to control what he did as a werewolf. I felt a rush of affection for the other three boys – many others would turn their back on a werewolf's friendship, but not them.

"Thank you for telling us," I finally said. "I can understand why you've been keeping it a secret, I don't blame you for that. Poor Remus… Does anyone else know?"

James nodded. "Dumbledore, most of the professors… Lily knows, because the two of them were prefects together and he told her."

"And Snivellus knows," Peter added.

"You told Snape?" I was incredulous. Snape was the last person I'd think of who they'd tell a secret to. "Why?" There had been a brief period during fifth year, however, when he'd had a theory about how Remus was only ever ill at the full moon and must be a werewolf, but no one believed it.

"Well, he… found out," said James uneasily. Peter looked shiftily at Sirius, who had a rather wary expression on his face as he watched Mandy and me.

"The same way we found out?" I asked. "Did Remus attack him?"

"Snivellus shouldn't have been sticking his nose into other people's business," Sirius said to no one in particular. "He was always asking us where we went, following us around to see what we were up to… he just wanted to get us expelled."

Something dawned on me. "That's why you wouldn't talk to us for a while last year after Mandy and I followed you once when you were sneaking outside? Because you thought we were doing what Snape did?"

James nodded. "Yeah, that's what that was. We weren't sure if we could trust you. But that was then – we trust you now."

"You _were_ doing what Snape did," said Sirius quietly, scowling at the floor. "Bloody Slytherins, you're all the same."

Mandy had come out of her shock enough to hear that. She drew in her breath sharply through her teeth, looking uneasily between Sirius and me.

I bristled with anger. "How can you say that?" I demanded of Sirius. "Of course we weren't trying to get you expelled! What is going on? What aren't you telling us?"

Peter coughed uncomfortably and said, "I'm going to go visit Moony in the hospital wing."

"Great idea," Mandy agreed immediately, and they both ran off down the stairs, leaving me, Sirius, and James alone. Somehow, it only heightened the tension in the room. I felt like Mandy and I had inadvertently uncovered some old wound and whatever it was, it had made Sirius angry with me, when moments before he'd been glad to see me unscathed after a near miss with a werewolf.

I walked over to Sirius and took his hands in my own. "Please, Sirius," I said calmly, "I'm not angry with you, and I'm certainly not going to tell anyone about Remus because he's still my friend, even though he's a werewolf. That doesn't bother me. Why are you acting like this?"

James gave Sirius a brief pat on the shoulder for encouragement and then headed out of the room as well.

Sirius sighed and sat on the bed. He wouldn't look at me, but he finally said, "In fifth year, I… played a trick on Snape. He'd been trying to find out where we went all the time, so I told him how to find out for himself. So he went out looking for Remus in the tunnel under the Whomping Willow, and when I told James about it, he went off and chased after Snape into the tunnel to get him out before Remus got to him."

"You… told him to go looking for a werewolf?" I clarified, perplexed. "That's how he found out about Remus?"

Finally he met my eyes. "Snape was winding me up. He followed me all day, saying horrible stuff about my friends, and I just couldn't take it anymore, I snapped. Look, I'm sorry, okay? If you suppose I don't regret it whenever I think about it, you're wrong. I felt like Moony would never trust me again, and I don't blame him."

So when Mandy and I had been out there and then rescued by James, it had affected Sirius by bringing back the memory of what he'd done to Remus two years ago, so it was understandable that he would be in such a bad mood. I knew Sirius often acted without really considering the consequences, but I wouldn't have expected him to be so thoughtless as to not realise that his idea of a prank could have killed someone.

"What's that look for?" he asked defensively, and I realised I'd been scowling. I stopped.

"I'm sorry, it's just a bit hard for me to hear that my boyfriend almost killed someone. I know you didn't mean to, but… what a cruel joke. Remus could have killed James or Snape."

"I should have expected this," he said nastily. "It was two years ago, and you hold this against me now. Of course you'd side with Snape, you're a Slytherin."

"I'm not siding with him!" I said, incensed at his insinuation that any Slytherin was by definition deceitful. "Why does it matter that I'm a Slytherin? That has nothing to do with this! Don't get so angry about it, I know it was years ago and you've changed since then."

"But _you_ haven't." He had that closed off look again, the look he always got when he didn't want to talk anymore. "I trusted you! But you're exactly what I've been trying my whole life to get away from. I don't know why I ever bothered with you."

I was crushed. My world came crashing down around me as he said those words. I couldn't believe what I was hearing – after three months together, _that_ was what he thought? We had both left our families and were unlikely to ever speak to our brothers again. We had so much in common, and I'd thought our relationship meant something. But apparently all he saw in me was Slytherin. And Slytherins were people he didn't trust, people who lied, people who, in his opinion, were not worth knowing. I had thought he had changed… I was wrong.

I was determined not to cry, but all the same I felt tears welling up in my eyes. "You're giving up on me because of a _label_ , given to me by a _hat?_ " I asked, willing my voice to stop shaking. "I have never heard of anything more ridiculous."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean that," said Sirius immediately. "Any of it."

"Then why did you say it?"

"I don't know."

I couldn't say anything else; all that came out was a sob. I covered my face with my hands, hoping I could just wipe the tears away and act like I was fine, but the tears kept streaming down my face. When I looked up between my fingers for a split second I saw Sirius stand up and take a step towards me, but I turned around and ran down the stairs.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: The title of this chapter is taken from the song "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight" by Genesis.**


	32. Ain't No Sunshine

I should have known it wasn't going to last; I had been silly to assume that we'd had anything special even though it had felt that way to me. But I had never expected it to end so soon. After three months we'd been together, it was nothing; I meant nothing to him, and I was heartbroken.

It was my own fault, in a way. I had been so upset about what Sirius had said that I'd rejected his apology when he tried to give it. It had been Wednesday at lunch, the first time we'd seen each other after I'd run out of Gryffindor Tower crying that morning.

"Hi," he'd said, chasing after me as we left Charms. "I didn't mean what I said this morning, you know that. I just hate remembering that prank I did, and I got defensive when you asked about it – you would too if you'd done something that stupid…"

I was unaffected. "Don't you play that game with me, Sirius Black. You want me to feel sorry for you and I absolutely do not. I haven't forgotten that last time you spoke to me, I was the Slytherin who ruined your life."

"I'm sorry," Sirius implored. "That's not what I think of you at all, it's not true. I wish I could take it back —"

"Stop," I interrupted. "I don't want to hear your excuses; you wouldn't have said it if you didn't mean it. I don't know why _I_ ever bothered with _you_. You're not the only boy in the school. I deserve better." And I'd marched off to the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, leaving him thunderstruck. It had made me feel better to say what I had said, but I regretted it ever since then. Now we weren't speaking to each other at all.

When I told Mandy and Charlotte everything that had happened, including the rant I'd subjected Sirius to, Mandy seemed even more upset than I was. It was as if she had decided that since she couldn't have Sirius, she wanted him and me to stay together forever. Charlotte merely said she was proud of me – she loved it whenever I shot my mouth off at someone.

I promised myself I wouldn't fall apart because of this; I'd always been a rather independent person, and my happiness didn't depend on Sirius. Despite the void he'd left behind, I was happy with the steady company of my two best friends, and the sounds of our laughter and the warmth of our friendship drove away my heartbreak.

But at the same time, I did miss the way he used to make me laugh, how he grinned whenever I walked into a room, the way we bickered all the time, the way he got that mischievous gleam in his eye that meant I'd have to talk him out of some stupid and reckless scheme he'd thought of… So I'd be happy for a while, when I wasn't thinking about him, but then I'd see that one-eyed witch statue in the third floor corridor that reminded me of the first time Sirius and I had snuck into Hogsmeade together, and I'd be stuck thinking about him for a while. And sometimes we'd pass each other in the corridors and not acknowledge one another, but those few seconds would replay themselves twenty times in my mind.

Sirius didn't seem to be moving on either; he rarely spoke to anyone except James, Remus, and Peter. I even saw him taking shortcuts through tapestries and claiming he'd forgotten books or other things so he could run back and evade any girls who thought to speak to him.

Another result of our breakup was that I never spent time with the other Gryffindors anymore. I went back to my Slytherin friends and just continued on with my life as it had been before. But at the end of the week I realised I still hadn't spoken to Remus after finding out about his lycanthropy, and he might be under the assumption that I didn't want anything to do with him anymore after finding out. So on Friday after Transfiguration, I joined Remus on his way out of class.

"Hi," I said.

He looked rather surprised that I was talking with him, as I hadn't spoken to any of the Gryffindor boys since Sirius and I broke up on Wednesday: I had only seen them together as a group since then, the way Mandy and Charlotte had been with me, and if I talked to one of the boys I'd have to be around Sirius too. As I spoke to Remus, Sirius sped up and walked away, and I did not look at him.

"Hi Melanie," said Remus. He seemed very unsure of what to say next, and I didn't blame him.

"Remus, they told me," I said quietly. "I'm sorry I didn't come see you when Mandy did – that's when everything happened with Sirius – but it wasn't because I didn't want to talk with you."

He said nothing, and kept walking with his head down, so I just continued talking as we climbed the stairs. "I still want to be your friend. I know what you are and it doesn't bother me; you're still a wonderful person."

Remus looked pained. "I'm so sorry," he managed to say. "I'm sorry you had to find out that way."

"You don't need to be sorry," I said. I felt horrible. "There was nothing you could have done about it. I know you're not yourself when… when that happens."

We were headed in the direction of the library, where we'd be afforded a bit more privacy than in the corridors and would be able to talk more openly without worrying someone would overhear us.

"I'm a monster," said Remus. "And I probably should have told you before, but, I just… I _couldn't_ , you know…"

"I understand why you didn't," I said. "And you're not a monster. You're so kind and you have such a big heart. Except for when someone's taken your chocolate." He didn't seem amused, but then again it had been a pretty terrible attempt to lighten the mood. I linked my arm through his and continued, "You're a great friend who even puts up with my bad jokes."

We walked into the library and sat at an isolated table near the back. Remus had cheered up considerably after I'd insisted that I had absolutely no intention of discontinuing our friendship, and it was almost back to normal again, until he brought up a topic that was sort of unavoidable.

"How are _you_ doing?" he asked.

He meant how I was doing without Sirius. I had gone this far without talking much about Sirius to anyone, and I was trying to not think about him again. But I suppose it had to come up at some point when I was talking with one of Sirius's best friends. "Fine," I said dully.

"That's good," he said. But I was not fine, and he knew it.

"Remus, how did this happen?" I blurted out wretchedly, trying to ignore how pathetic I sounded. "The only thing I've done wrong is apparently being a Slytherin. But your house isn't supposed to matter! I thought it all meant something!"

"No one cares that you're a Slytherin, Melanie, we like you for who you are. Just like the way you don't mind that I'm a werewolf. Listen… well, I don't think Sirius would appreciate me saying this, but he won't say it himself… I've never seen him so unhappy. He'd never admit it, but it's because you two aren't talking; he misses you a lot. He's just too stubborn to admit he's wrong."

I just stared at him. I felt a twinge of guilt; Sirius had tried to say he was wrong, but I had refused to listen. "You really think so?"

"Don't tell him I said any of that," Remus added with a hint of a smile. "I think he'd kill me if he knew I was discussing his feelings."

"As if I would. Don't know if you've noticed, but the two of us aren't talking," I said with a watery laugh. I felt a vindictive sort of pleasure in that I was not alone in my misery and that Sirius was suffering just as much. But more than that, it meant so much to hear the affirmation from Remus that he liked me for who I was. Remus had always been the most sympathetic of the four boys, and his being a werewolf probably was a major reason for that; he'd always disliked an aspect of himself, so he knew how to deal with a friend in the depths of self-pity. He could relate, because he'd seen worse in himself. And that helped me be myself again.

If this past year had taught me anything, it was that I was strong enough to handle whatever life threw at me. I had already dealt with so much family trouble, and watching my brother follow a path I could never approve of. So Sirius was not going to upset me now. It had hurt to hear it and to see him walk away, but I knew I'd be fine. I was a strong and independent young woman; there was no need for me to doubt my identity and self-worth.

I leaned over and gave him a huge hug. "Thanks Remus," I said. "You're wonderful."

I took Remus's words to heart the following day when I encountered Sirius again. I walked into an empty classroom to practise Charms, and was startled to see Sirius and a hedgehog already in the room, as I was not expecting anyone to be in there. Sirius was sitting on a desk, and there was another desk missing where the hedgehog sat. Sirius looked up immediately upon hearing my footsteps creaking on the floor, and then turned the hedgehog back into a desk.

"Er… hello," I said, hoping that I could make amends with Sirius, if he really was as upset as Remus had said. "You all right?"

He didn't respond, but continued to watch me. I stepped closer and set my bag down on the nearest desk, and Sirius scowled, but he remained there; I took this as a good sign. But I had no idea what to say, so I leaned forward and placed my hands roughly on his shoulders, and my lips on his. I felt him smile briefly before he kissed me back, a brief moment of gratification in all the discord, and then far too soon, he pulled away, frowning slightly.

Sirius was confused. So was I, and we hadn't really solved anything. But at least we had each other's attention now. "Sirius, can we talk about what happened?" I finally asked. "Does it really annoy you that much that I'm a Slytherin? What am I supposed to do?"

He sighed. "No, what I don't like is you trying to rat us out, dragging up my past and judging me for it."

"I was not trying to find out anything! I told you, we had no idea you were out there. Trust me."

And what did he expect from a relationship – that we could just hide the worst parts of ourselves? He had already seen various unpleasant aspects of me, but now that I'd found his secret, he'd gotten defensive. He was watching me hesitantly, almost apprehensively, as if he only craved appreciation, wanted me to forget it all and kiss him again. But I didn't. I just frowned. So Sirius swept out the door right past me. I turned around and chased after him.

"Sirius!" I called, and grabbed his arm as I caught up with him, turning him around. He snatched his arm out of my grip and kept walking briskly, his head down as if to block out everything going on around him. I sadly watched him go down the corridor until he turned a corner out of sight, and then I went back into the classroom and slumped into a chair.

Sirius evidently didn't want to bother with me. I had tried, and it hadn't worked. That was all I could do. So I didn't allow my mind to dwell on him; I got out my textbook and my wand and concentrated all my attention on Charms.

One person in particular had been quite thrilled that Sirius and I were no longer together. On Monday morning, as I left the Great Hall after breakfast with Mandy and Charlotte, I heard Vanessa Saltz's excited voice behind us. "Oh, look, it's the Death Eaters!" she exclaimed.

We continued walking, but she caught up to us. "Your Love Potion stopped working, did it, Hastings?" Vanessa cried loudly. "I'm assuming that's how you got Sirius Black to notice you in the first place. Because normally he'd never go for a Slytherin – you know, because you lot are all Death Eaters."

I rolled my eyes. Could she not think of anything more original? I'd heard this so many times by now that it didn't even bother me anymore.

"Leave her alone," said another voice that was not Mandy's or Charlotte's; I looked behind me with surprise to find Althea Seward. "Why are you so mean to people all the time?" she said, her arms crossed and a frown on her face. I was rather impressed that she would actually interfere like this; it seemed so unlike her to stick her nose out. But I felt a sort of pride seeing such a short and quiet Hufflepuff standing up to Vanessa.

"Thanks, Althea," I said, "but we're fine. Like you said, she doesn't bother us." I put an arm around her in a sort of side hug.

"So is it true?" Vanessa said breathlessly, undeterred. She looked from me to Charlotte. "I heard both of your families are Death Eaters!"

I glanced at Charlotte. Somehow, Vanessa had gotten very accurate information – unless she was just bluffing, which was equally likely. But I didn't want to say anything, because I knew Vanessa had lost her dad to the Death Eaters, and I couldn't bring myself to argue with her, despite the provocation. She was insecure, with no control over her own life, and maybe that was why she interfered with others, in an attempt to feel better about herself. But here she'd tried picking on my insecurities the way she always did, and it hadn't upset me this time. We had won.

Charlotte snorted. "Yes, we're Death Eaters and if you don't shut up and go away we'll call for our best mate You-Know-Who to come sort you out, so leave us alone. Are you scared?"

Vanessa stuck her lip out and wrinkled up her nose in an expression of distaste and possibly disappointment that she hadn't reduced us to tears. "Charlotte, stop," I muttered, thinking about Vanessa's history with Death Eaters; as much as I hated her, she didn't deserve a tactless reminder like that.

Leaving her in our wake, Charlotte put her arms around Mandy's and my shoulders and began walking us all away with her head held high. As we left, I chanced a look over my shoulder back at Vanessa; our eyes met, and I saw only sadness there now.

I didn't stop to speak with her, because I doubted we could have anything nice to say, but I held her gaze until my friends and I rounded the corner, and more than verbally getting one up on Vanessa, I felt the look of understanding that passed between us was the turning point when our fighting stopped. We had shared feelings of fear through that glance. Somewhere deep inside, both of us were on the same side. The side that was terrified of the Death Eaters.

* * *

Mandy and I couldn't leave the common room at night anymore, as the idea had rather lost its appeal after our most recent venture. We reserved all our explorations of the castle for daylight hours, and had little to distract us from late night homework.

One such night, when we both wanted to get out and walk for a while, Mandy and I were instead sitting in a corner of the common room surrounded by abandoned Herbology homework. I was drawing a large picture of a unicorn on the inside cover of my textbook while Mandy charmed small spindly legs onto her parchment.

"You know, I was just thinking, and there's something I'm still confused about," Mandy said. "About the Gryffindors. They never explained why the rest of them were out there the night we… found Remus." She looked around to make sure no one was listening to us, then continued in a whisper. "They were all in the Forbidden Forest, I know it. They always look like that every time they come back from sneaking out at night. But why would they do that on a full moon when they _knew_ Remus was outside as a werewolf? It just doesn't make sense."

"I doubt we'll ever find out now," I said. "Remus is the only one of them who talks to me anymore, and for some reason I don't imagine he really likes to discuss being a werewolf."

"No, I don't suppose he would," said Mandy. "And by the way, Peter still talks to me," she added with a laugh. "They sure stick together, though, don't they? Nothing could ever drive a wedge between anyone in a group that loyal to each other."

They really were loyal, like brothers. As I'd come to know them, I had seen into the dynamic of these four popular boys. James, a pampered kid who'd had everything he ever wanted in life, except siblings, had united a group of misfits who craved that kind of friendship: a werewolf, a shy awkward kid, and one who was an outcast from his own family. Perhaps this was why James had warmed to us Slytherins in spite of his spoken dislike for the house; he saw we were misfits too.

I hadn't told Mandy the details of the prank Sirius played on Snape during fifth year, but I thought maybe that was the one thing that had ever come between the Gryffindor boys. And their friendship had overcome even that. So despite the fact that Mandy and Charlotte and I had been such good friends with them, their friendship with Sirius came first, and they couldn't easily remain friends with his ex-girlfriend.

"Kind of like the way you and Charlotte have stuck with me," I said. "I really appreciate it – I know I can't have been the best company these past few days."

"That's what friends are for, Mel. We stick together through the good times and the bad. But it seems like things are getting better now, right?"

"Yeah," I said truthfully. "I can't sulk about it forever if Sirius changed his mind about me. But…" I sighed. "I just wish he hadn't, that's all."

Mandy looked at me sadly. "I thought he fell for you pretty hard. And now he's miserable because he broke up with you for a stupid reason."

"Sirius doesn't fall for people," I said dismissively. " _I_ shouldn't have fallen for _him_."

"Someone else will come along," said Mandy. I shrugged. I didn't want someone else.

We sat in silence for a few minutes while I added a dragon to my artwork inside my textbook. Then, because I didn't want to discuss Sirius anymore and I knew Mandy's love life would provide ample conversation, I asked her, "What about you? What's new?"

"Well… I'm actually going out with Roderick Cadwallader," she said, looking rather guilty. "Sorry," she added.

"Don't be sorry," I laughed. "There's no reason you can't be happy about going out with him just because you feel sorry for me. And you don't even need to feel bad for me anymore. I don't."

"Okay," said Mandy. "Well, it's pretty recent. I didn't want to tell you at first because you were upset about Sirius."

"What about Remus? I thought you liked him."

Mandy sighed. "Well, I did. But now I understand why he's been pushing me away. I don't think he wants to go out with _anyone_. I think it's a lot to do with his girlfriend during the spring of our fifth year. You remember when she dumped him in front of the whole school and screamed at him… it was after he finally told her that he was a werewolf. It hurt him really badly, and I don't think he's gotten over it. He had fallen head over heels for her, and then she wanted nothing to do with him after that. He doesn't want to go through that again."

"But you already know he's a werewolf, and that doesn't affect how you feel!"

"Right, but I don't think it matters to him. Can't you see how he sees it? He's trying to protect himself by never loving anyone again. And I can't make him change his mind."

"But what if he thinks you're giving up because you've learned the truth about him? He might think you aren't interested in a relationship anymore because he's a werewolf."

"Of course not," said Mandy. "It's because I finally understand why he was holding back, and I'm trying to respect that. I think the best way for me to help him is just by being his friend."

I could understand why Mandy had done what she had, but despite her best intentions, I thought she might have inadvertently hurt Remus even more.

* * *

The rest of the week passed by quickly what with multiple Quidditch practises a day in preparation for our game against Gryffindor. The first Saturday of February was the Quidditch match. I was more determined than ever to win. Fortunately, the rest of the team were equally determined, because Gryffindor were always our ultimate rivals. Besides, Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup as well as the House Cup last year. It was Slytherin's turn now.

We started out well: although evenly matched, we stayed about one goal ahead of them for a while. At least this time there wasn't a Gryffindor commentating on the match, which was an improvement from last year. The commentator for this game was Nick Smith, one of the Hufflepuff Chasers, who put no personal bias into his commentating because he didn't like anyone. This made it fair for both sides.

After the initial excitement of being continually ahead, the Gryffindor Chasers scored four goals in rapid succession. I was doing the best I could to get in the way of the Gryffindor players while I hit Bludgers at them, but the game began to go in their favour. Byrd, our other Beater, accidentally hit James with his bat, although it looked intentional, so Gryffindor got a penalty shot. Andrew Derrick, one of our Chasers, collided so forcefully with Gryffindor's Keeper that they both were knocked out and fell off their brooms, but Madam Hooch slowed their fall as they neared the ground and neither one of them was injured too badly.

The din of the voices in the stand surrounding us grew louder with the number of injuries on the pitch. Then Hector got one goal in the Gryffindor hoop with no Keeper to block it, but Gryffindor's Seeker Roderick Cadwallader got the Snitch immediately afterwards and it was all over. Gryffindor had beaten us by miles.

Slytherin's loss certainly didn't help me feel any better; nor did it help Mandy, who had bet Roderick a significant amount of money that Slytherin would win. But the two of them arranged a date that night and then Mandy wasn't too bothered about losing to Gryffindor or even losing her ten Galleons.

Charlotte and I were lying on our beds reading in the dormitory on Saturday night when Mandy walked dreamily into the room, her clothes rumpled and her lipstick very messy. "Well, _well_ ," said Charlotte, smirking as she set her book in her lap.

"Hey," I said. "So… I was going to ask you how your date was, but I think I've got the idea," I said.

"What?" Mandy reached up to feel her hair, and then walked into the bathroom. She came back a few minutes later with tamed hair and no more smeared lipstick. "Anyway," she continued as if none of that had just happened, "did you know there's a room like a little cottage on the seventh floor? Roderick showed me this room that I've never noticed before, we were just wandering in the corridor and it was almost like it appeared out of nowhere! So we went in… it was lovely, it was this little quaint room that looked like it was from a fairy tale. I bet no one else even knows about it; we had it all to ourselves. It was _so_ romantic. There were a bunch of candles lit—"

"Ew, stop right there," said Charlotte, holding her hand up. "No need to elaborate on your romantic evening together." She picked her book up again and flicked through the pages, trying to find where she'd left off.

"Hey, it wasn't like that," Mandy said defensively. "We were having a picnic."

"Is that what they call it these days?" said Charlotte from behind her book. I sat there giggling while Mandy got more and more embarrassed and eventually threw her shoe at Charlotte.

* * *

The Hogsmeade day was set for the next Saturday. Sirius and I had been broken up for two weeks now, and it was clear I wouldn't be going with him, because we still wouldn't even look at each other. I wanted to go with Mandy and Charlotte, but Mandy had a date with Roderick, and Charlotte said she was busy. Because this trip was the Saturday just before Valentine's Day, it only emphasized that I was single and alone. I could either stay behind at the castle and do my work, go by myself, or ask someone. And I didn't fancy being alone and bitter in Hogsmeade on the day that the most couples would be around, so I thought I'd ask someone.

At breakfast one day that week I asked Hector if he had plans for Hogsmeade on Saturday, and thought that maybe I'd go with him, but he said he was already planning to go with Althea Seward. So then I found Octavius Pepper before Herbology and asked him instead. He looked surprised when I asked him, but he agreed.

Someone jostled my arm as I stood there talking to Octavius, and then Sirius pushed by me into the greenhouse. Octavius slipped and fell on his back like a turtle. I sighed. Obviously Sirius had overheard and was displeased that I wasn't sulking about him anymore.

As I sat down at my seat, I saw Sirius staring straight at me, and we looked at each other for a few moments – the first time we'd really acknowledged each other in two weeks. But then he lifted up _Flesh-Eating Trees of the World_ and stood it up on its end on the desk, essentially hiding himself behind it, and began reading.

Halfway through class, James approached my desk. "Can I have that watering can?" he asked. I handed it to him, and he remained there. "Will you two just talk to each other?" James asked quietly. "You're both driving me mad."

"You're his best friend; isn't that _your_ job? He's more likely to listen to you than he is to anyone."

"I've tried, but… he doesn't want advice from me," he said, his eyebrows knitting together. "I think he's annoyed that Lily and I are happy. Anyway, _I'm_ not the real reason he's upset."

"So you agree with him, then? You think it's my fault?"

James scowled. "Melanie, he's my best friend, so of course I'm going to stand by him. That _doesn't_ mean I think he's right, though – I've already told him several times he's being a miserable git for something that had nothing to do with you. But you aren't helping."

"Oh," I said, surprised. "Well, I appreciate it… but I'm really the last person who could help." Especially now that Sirius had overheard me asking someone else out. I put my head in my hands and stared at the potted shrub on my desk as James went back to his seat with the watering can.

Sirius was no longer hiding behind his textbook and was dumping soil into a tray disconsolately. I hated seeing him like that, and I knew it was my fault. The situation really shouldn't have escalated out of control the way it had since we broke up. But we'd both said things we regretted and been unkind, and out of a combination of guilt and resentment, neither of us wanted to speak to the other. For the moment, it was easier that way than trying to fix it. But the easiest thing to do was not always the best.

"You have dirt all over your face," said Mandy. I lifted my head from my hands and went back to work, thinking of the best way to try to rebuild my friendship with Sirius.

After class I went to talk to him. I walked up to him with a smile, hoping we could start this off on the right foot rather than snarling at each other. But before I said anything, he asked, "What, you want to tell me how happy you are now that you've got a date with Pepper? If you're trying to make me jealous, it's not working."

My good intentions turned sour; I didn't have time for this rubbish. "It's all about _you_ , isn't it," I laughed bitterly. "Did it ever occur to you that I might be happier with someone who doesn't snap at me for everything and hold a grudge for weeks? And stop hexing him. You dumped me, so stop trying to sabotage any other opportunities I have to be happy with someone else."

"Fine," he said. "You want the truth? I _am_ jealous. Does that make you feel better?"

"No, not at all." I had no idea what else to say. I twisted the strap of my bag with my muddy hand, realising too late that my hands still smelt of dragon dung compost, and then Octavius came out of the greenhouse. Sirius had seen him too. He looked from Octavius to me, and then strode off up the hill without another word.

* * *

 **Disclaimer: The song "Ain't No Sunshine" is by Bill Withers.**


	33. Those Who Defied the Dark Lord

Octavius Pepper and I went to the Three Broomsticks first thing to get out of the cold when we got into Hogsmeade on Saturday. Octavius was nice, but I couldn't help feeling that he didn't particularly want to be there with me; he kept getting distracted while we were talking. That was fine, because I would rather have been there with someone else anyway.

When we left the Three Broomsticks, the usually crowded High Street was oddly empty. With a sense of déjà vu I looked around, half expecting to see a dementor gliding towards us.

"Where is everyone?" I asked Octavius.

"Dunno," he said. "It's cold, so everyone's probably inside."

There was one other group of people in the street, and one of the guys walked over to us. "Did you hear about You-Know-Who?" he asked.

"What about him?" asked Octavius.

"Someone told me he's here."

"Here in Hogsmeade?" I asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow. People were always thinking Voldemort was around, and this would be a silly place for him to show up. But it would explain why no one was outside.

"That's what I heard," he responded. "I don't know how true it is, since I heard it from someone who heard it from someone – you know how that goes – but we're going to go inside. You probably should, too."

Octavius and I followed the group of people and ended up back in the Three Broomsticks again. I kept watching out the window to see if Voldemort would come strolling down the street. When I looked back at the table, Octavius was busy talking to someone else – quite flirtatiously, I noticed. The group we'd come in with were all busy in conversation about someone I didn't know, and I felt very isolated – my heart wasn't really in this Hogsmeade visit. Octavius noticed, however, and asked me in a whisper if I wanted to leave. He moved his chair out as if to join me, but since he really seemed to be enjoying his afternoon with the people at our table, I gave him an encouraging smile and departed alone.

I was considering just heading back to the castle early and doing my homework, which I had been trying to avoid by coming here in the first place, when I saw Charlotte walking with Lester in the street. I was surprised to see Charlotte in Hogsmeade, because last I'd heard, she had other plans for the day.

Voldemort was still nowhere to be found, so I ran out the door of the Three Broomsticks and up the street to greet Charlotte. But just when she turned her head and saw me, Lester looked up too. He pulled something out of his pocket, shoved it at Charlotte's arm, and the two of them disappeared.

I stared at the ground where they had just disappeared, intent on finding them again; something seemed wrong. Maybe it was the rumours about Voldemort that I'd just heard, or maybe it was just that I was wary of whatever Lester did, but I felt uneasy.

Suddenly I heard a scream coming from the abandoned building at the end of the High Street. The building had been empty for a couple of years since the apothecary previously there had gone out of business, and there had been plans for another shop to move into the building, but nothing had happened yet. And now, from the sound of it, Charlotte was being tortured in there. I stood rooted to the ground, staring at the building without an idea of what to do, while scenarios flew through my mind. It might be Voldemort in there, if the rumours were true. I could be tortured as well if I ran after her. I could be too late if I tried to find help. But then I heard the scream again and without another thought I ran frantically towards the old apothecary.

I burst through the door, panting, and as the wooden door swung wildly on its hinge and crashed against the wall, several faces turned to stare at me. My heart almost stopped when I realised who was in the room. Charlotte was backed up against a wall, clutching her side in obvious agony. Lester and another Death Eater were standing beside her; I couldn't see the other person's face behind the mask, but his wand was still in Charlotte's face. In addition to Charlotte and Lester, there were a few more people in cloaks and dark hoods… and Voldemort was there.

"Well, if it isn't a little family reunion," said Voldemort. His voice was high and cold, and just hearing him speak made me feel as if the temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees. He was watching me with red snakelike eyes, and I couldn't take my eyes off him for fear that he'd kill me if I turned around. "How touching. So you've both come to join your brothers."

I felt a surge of anger at his taunt about Nathan. "Why are you torturing her?" I asked. I put my hand in my pocket and grasped my fingers tightly around my wand so I could defend myself in an instant if anything happened.

"She deceived me," said Voldemort simply. "I'm trying to decide what to do with her."

"Let her go!" I suggested uselessly. Voldemort only resumed looking at his wand, brushing off a speck of dust.

Charlotte broke the tense silence. "Are we in the Shrieking Shack?" she asked. I could hear her voice shaking, and it scared me even more than Voldemort did. Nothing ever unnerved Charlotte.

"No," said Lester conversationally, as if he had not just transported her into a dimly lit old building full of Death Eaters and Voldemort. "Other end of the street, where the old apothecary used to be."

There was another silence. The Death Eater in front of Charlotte was staring at me (at least I thought he was – his mask made it hard to tell, but he was facing my direction now), and Voldemort was looking between me and Charlotte. "Well, I don't want to interrupt," I said lightly, "so I'll just get Charlotte and be off."

"You haven't come to join?" said Voldemort. "Think of it – power you can't imagine. People would respect you. You could be great."

"I'm not interested," I said. "People already respect me. I'm great enough, thank you." The hand gripping my wand was shaking.

Charlotte seemed to be more at ease now that she was no longer being tortured, and her confidence returned. "Yeah, what makes you think we'd want to join you?" she said insolently to Voldemort, defiance etched on her regal face. "You believe you're so great, don't you. But no one actually thinks you're a big deal except you and your misguided bunch of losers. And those masks are hideous. If you think I'm going to wear that, you've got another think coming. I guess they're not as bad as your face, though. What happened there?"

"Not the time, Charlotte," I pleaded. She was going to get herself killed if she said things like that.

"I shouldn't have trusted your choice, Avery," Voldemort told Lester. "This is not what I asked for. We have no use for her. Kill her." The first Death Eater who was not Lester raised his wand.

I screamed " _Expelliarmus!_ " and Disarmed the Death Eater, giving Charlotte time to run. She grabbed my arm and we started running. I had inadvertently put myself between her and the Death Eater who was supposed to kill her, and he'd already picked up his wand again. Another Death Eater blocked our path, and we stopped. But the first one just pointed his wand at us, and didn't use any spells.

"Hastings! Now!" said Voldemort. I looked up at him as I heard my name, then realised he hadn't meant me at all. The Death Eater threatening us was _Nathan_. I felt physically sick. At least if I vomited it would be on Voldemort's feet.

But Nathan wasn't doing anything, not with me standing so close to Charlotte. I stood in front of her, blocking her from Nathan's reach. Nathan sighed, as his disguise was useless now. "Get out of the way, Melanie," said his voice from behind the mask.

"Don't you dare kill my friend, Nathan," I said, outraged. It was the first time I'd seen him after unleashing my opinions on my family the past summer, and I had finished pretending long ago – it was all out in the open now. I knew how to stand up for myself now, and I wasn't going to cave in to Voldemort bullying my brother around.

"You hear that, Nathan?" Charlotte asked aggressively from behind me. "I am one of your sister's best friends. If you kill me, you're going to be hurting her more than you'll hurt me."

Nathan seemed to deflate and lowered his wand slightly. He couldn't do it. Voldemort was not pleased, and raised his wand at Nathan.

"No!" I cried. As angry as I was with Nathan, I wouldn't watch Voldemort kill him. No one was going to die in here today if I could help it.

To appease Voldemort, Nathan aimed an _Avada Kedavra_ at the window about three feet above Charlotte's head. It blasted a hole in the window and showered us with glass.

Charlotte fired back with an Impediment Jinx. And before we knew it, we were engaged in a battle with Voldemort and four Death Eaters. I couldn't remember the most important things we'd learned in Defence Against the Dark Arts and resorted to using the same few spells over and over, but it was working to an extent. We were still alive, after all.

There were only two of us and five of them. Voldemort didn't seem to be doing much fighting, but even without him helping his Death Eaters we were still outnumbered two to one. I took to hiding behind the stone columns and aiming my spells from there. " _Stupefy!_ " I cried from my hiding place.

The nearest Death Eater spotted me when the red jet of light zipped from my wand, and aiming her wand at the column protecting me, shouted " _Reducto!_ "

I hurriedly cast a Shield Charm and fled from the Death Eater who was chasing me. Fiery sparks filled the room. A Killing Curse whizzed by me and I narrowly avoided it by ducking behind a pile of rubble. Nathan was aiming spells at the walls and slowly destroying the building, but I never saw him attempt any curses on Charlotte or me. Two of the stone columns had crumbled now and the roof was falling in. If we couldn't get out of here soon, the roof would fall and kill all of us anyway.

One of the Death Eaters seemed to be enjoying himself and exploded a large hole in the roof, then cried out " _Morsmordre!_ " Smoky green light erupted from his wand, but I couldn't stop to watch and ran out of the way of the debris raining down upon me.

"Not now, you idiot," said the Death Eater nearest him. "Don't get excited." It sounded like Lucius Malfoy, one of Nathan's best friends, but I couldn't tell for sure. Lucius's only distinguishing feature was his long blonde hair, which I had used to admire when I was younger, but the Death Eater was wearing a hood.

Years ago, I had tried so hard to impress Nathan's friends so I could play Quidditch with them. But now, Nathan had more intimidating friends, and I was no longer just his kid sister. I was fighting for my life.

I heard more shouting from outside and then loud footsteps on the floor like several people running. Who would come blundering into a building like this right now? I could only hope it was Aurors here to save us.

The door banged open again and Sirius appeared, closely followed by James and Lily. All three of them had their wands out. A spell nearly hit Lily the instant she stepped in, but she ducked and ran in to join the fray. James ran after her, knocking down a Death Eater with the Body-Bind Curse as he went.

Sirius remained where he was standing. Our eyes locked; I just stood there staring at him for a few seconds as spells whizzed around us in the room. The expression on his face was a combination of relief and shock and something else I couldn't identify. Then he ran towards me and I rushed forward to meet him. He threw his arms around me so tightly I could hardly breathe – like he never wanted to let me go again. We forgave everything instantly. All that mattered was just that he was here; we could talk later. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

He let go his grip slightly, but he was still holding on to me. "You ran into this building, and just now I saw the Dark Mark appear over it. What was I supposed to do, just keep walking and ignore it?"

"There's a Dark Mark over this building?" I asked, overcome with terror. I gripped his shirt even tighter and looked towards the hole in the roof.

"Yes. I didn't see anyone dead when I came in, though."

"But… but what were you doing coming in here? You could have died! If there's a Dark Mark…"

"I know. But I thought something had happened to you, and though we haven't been on good terms for a while, I couldn't stand to lose you. Things like this make you realise what you care about… what's important to you. And that means sticking with the people we have, because you never know what's going to happen, and… I love you."

Of all the things he could have said at that moment, that was the last thing I was expecting, and I laughed, then felt badly about it. "I'm sorry, it's just that… Sirius, I love you, but your timing is _awful_. Can we continue this when we don't have Voldemort breathing down our necks?"

He grinned. I had missed seeing that, but didn't have time to dwell on it now. "Yeah, that's a good idea," he said. "For now, let's go fight Voldemort." We finally let go of each other, then he grabbed my hand and we leapt out from behind the pillar, wands ready.

Sirius took down a Death Eater with a powerful Stunning Spell. Lily was fighting two Death Eaters by herself, and James was battling Voldemort. Over the din of spells crashing off things I could hear what sounded like Voldemort trying to get James to join him as well, because he was a pureblood. Obviously that was never going to happen.

I let go of Sirius and took one of Lily's Death Eaters and repeatedly tried to blast him into the wall, but then I realised it was Nathan because he refused to fight with me and he went back to attack Lily. So I went after the other Death Eater instead.

There was a crash and a cry of pain, and I looked back to see Sirius on the floor. His leg was bent at an odd angle, and Voldemort had stopped duelling with James to come talk to Sirius. James was helping Lily fight against Nathan.

"I know quite a few members of your family," Voldemort said to Sirius, who glared up at him, clutching his leg and gritting his teeth. I couldn't tell if it was from pain or anger. But I was sure that if he'd been able to stand up, he would have run over and attacked Voldemort. Still with his eyes on Voldemort, Sirius reached out for his wand, which was a few inches away from him on the floor.

I attempted to Stun Voldemort but he deflected the spell without even looking. One of the Death Eaters – the one I thought might be Lucius – moved in to fight with me. I Disarmed him and then sped away to help Sirius, who was crawling along the floor in pain.

Lucius wasn't Disarmed for long; a spell grazed my shoulder and I felt searing pain, and looked to see a deep gash dripping blood. Instantly, Sirius, his face set with a fierce rage, leapt up but then collapsed once more on his leg. "Get away from her," he bellowed at Lucius as he lay on the floor. "I'll kill you!" He reached across the floor for his wand again, but Lucius had got away. I ran over to Sirius.

"Melanie," he said, eyeing my shoulder with concern.

"I'm all right, Sirius," I assured him. I grabbed hold of him and attempted to get him away from Voldemort.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I'm getting you away from there so you don't get killed! You can't fight with a broken leg!"

"It's only my leg. I can still help!"

"You can't even stand!"

"I can't sit here and watch," he insisted. "I'll be damned if I'm just going to stay safe while Death Eaters attack my girlfriend."

I sighed; it was pointless to resist, because I knew he'd try to get back up and keep fighting if it killed him. I crouched down and he put his arm around my shoulders, and helped him stand up. He was hopping on his good leg, grimacing in pain, but determined. I remained by his side, because he wouldn't get far on one leg, and we shot spells at Death Eaters together. And he was right – despite his painful leg injury, he was fighting admirably. Nothing could stop him.

Sirius hit a Death Eater with a Stunning Spell as I simultaneously cast a Leg-Locker Jinx. "Nice one, Melanie!" said Sirius as we watched the Death Eater keel over, unconscious, his legs like a board. I grinned at Sirius. We made a great team.

Charlotte was across the room battling with Lester. Both of them looked furious. And Voldemort was now fighting James and Lily. I had never truly appreciated just how talented the two of them were at Defence Against the Dark Arts. I watched in awe as they fired spell after spell at Voldemort, standing their ground impressively, silhouetted by the blaze of red and green lights between them and Voldemort.

More commotion came from the doorway and I looked over to see three people. For a split second I feared they were coming to back up the Death Eaters, but the newcomers were not masked. One, I was stunned to discover, was Frank Longbottom, who had left Hogwarts several years ago. The other two were older and I didn't recognise them. But they ran right into the battle and fought with us against the Death Eaters.

Voldemort had had enough of people running in to help us out. "You four were supposed to get me into Hogwarts, not alert the whole world that we were here," he said angrily to Lester. "I should have known, after your foolish plan last time that sent two people to Azkaban." He Disapparated without another word and left his Death Eaters to continue the fight.

"He's gone!" cried one of the newcomers. She looked back at the other two.

"Watch out, Dorcas, another Death Eater behind you," said Frank. He and the other wizard, a man with a square jaw and thick blond hair, hurried to find the other Death Eaters and apprehend them before they disappeared as well. Dorcas turned around and battled with Nathan.

Sirius let go of my shoulder and sat down on a crumbled column, holding on to his leg. His shoe was covered in blood. But still he fired spells at Death Eaters, despite not being able to walk.

Charlotte came stumbling around a corner. "Lester's been Stunned, he's unconscious," she panted as she ran over to me. "Who are all these people?"

"Aurors, maybe," I said. "I don't know, but I'm glad they came – they scared Voldemort away." I looked back into the main room. The Aurors, James, and Lily were still fighting the Death Eaters while Charlotte and I hid, hearts pounding. And my head was spinning, but we couldn't stay here forever. Should we go back and help?" I suggested.

Charlotte's long dark hair had come out of its ponytail, and she brushed a loose strand off her sweaty face. I gasped when I saw what was on her wrist: the gold and sapphire wristwatch. How in Merlin's name had she managed to get hold of that?

"What is that, Charlotte?" I asked, pointing to the watch.

"This? It's Lester's. He snapped it on my arm to take me here. Portkey." She eyed my shoulder, which was bleeding profusely, and took out her wand.

"That's the watch that made Remus unconscious in the trophy room last year," I told her as she clumsily applied a bandage to my shoulder; it took her two tries to get the spell right in our state of terror.

"Lester said he and Snape and Mulciber used it to practise spells and curses; they must have left it in the trophy room the day Remus found it. I didn't think anything of it when I first saw it. But I was wrong. They were going to use it to bring He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named into the castle today. You've lost a lot of blood, Mel…"

"And you knew all along?" I asked, disgusted. "You knew they were going to bring Voldemort in?"

"Of course not," said Charlotte. "Lester told me all of this when we were walking through Hogsmeade this morning. I've been playing along, pretending to be interested so I could find out what he's doing as a Death Eater. But I must have acted too well, because he didn't tell me where we were going today, he just took me here… he really thought I wanted to join."

We heard a shout and turned to see one of the Death Eaters on the floor with his arms bound behind his back. "Good one, Sturgis," said Dorcas. "Keep him there while I get this one." She tried to tie up another one, the one I thought was Lucius, but he spun and Disapparated before she could finish. The ropes cascaded from her wand out onto the floor where Lucius had vanished.

The Death Eaters were giving up! Charlotte and I ran back in to help. "Where did you leave Lester?" I asked Charlotte. "We should get him tied up as well so he can't escape back to Voldemort."

"Back here," she said, and we hurried into an alcove in the back. No one was there. "He was here," Charlotte insisted. "I should have tied him up when I Stunned him, I just didn't think of it."

"He can't have gotten far, he was unconscious for at least a few minutes," I said. Joining the others, we went back into the main room to look for him.

We were so close to victory over the Death Eaters; we had already driven Voldemort and one Death Eater away, and captured another. It was a great feeling. But all I wanted right now was to be done fighting.

Frank, Lily, and James were chasing Nathan. He didn't put up too much of a fight, although he released the ropes on the other Death Eater, who re-entered the battle, much to Sturgis's dismay. Contrary to when the fight had begun, the Death Eaters were now outnumbered, but still hanging on. The Death Eater who had previously been tied up tried to Apparate away at least twice, but had to stop each time when curses were aimed at him mid-Apparition that would have Splinched him.

With my attention on this battle, and my attempts to stop Nathan and the other Death Eater before they got away, no one noticed when Lester reappeared. But he did, using the battle as a distraction – he snuck up behind us as we were preoccupied, and we only noticed him when suddenly Dorcas fell down and lay there unmoving. Frank went to her aid as the rest of us continued fighting, and Lester ran about the room, ahead of the rest of us as he cast curses haphazardly in every direction. The previously tied up Death Eater finally succeeded in Apparating.

"She's all right," I heard Frank shout from behind us. Charlotte and I were trailing a few feet behind Lester as we chased him, but we were gaining on him. I turned his leg into wood as he ran, and he stumbled on it, but without any delay he faced us. A jet of white light shot out of his wand and hit Charlotte, blasting her backwards into a column.

The spell seemed to go through her, and the column collapsed as if in slow motion. I screamed. Charlotte fell to the ground with the impact of Lester's spell, and the pillar crumbled on top of her with a reverberating, booming crash. Dust rose up in an immense, ominous cloud around her, and she was completely obscured by debris.


	34. Echoes

The most urgent thing in my mind was to get Charlotte out of the rubble and make sure she would be okay. Panicking, I ran over to her through the settling dust. I neither knew nor cared where Lester was at the moment – there were Aurors present, so someone else could handle him for now. The noise of the battle faded away as all my attention focused on Charlotte. My hands trembled as I attempted to extricate her from the crumbled stone where she was lying uncomfortably and gasping for breath.

"Charlotte!" I cried. I Levitated a large stone block off her chest and deposited it arbitrarily a few feet away, then knelt down beside her. Blood trickled down her face and robes. Her eyes were barely open, but when I knelt at her side, she opened them and gazed up at me.

"Don't let them win," she said hoarsely. "Get back in there and catch him. You can't do anything for me."

"Don't talk like that," I protested. "I'm going to get you out of here. I'm not leaving you!"

She looked directly into my eyes. "There's nothing you can do. I'm dying, Melanie." It sounded like each word was causing her pain.

"No!" I willed her words to not be true. I grabbed onto her hand and squeezed it tightly, as if my holding on to her could help her cling to life. Her hand was shaking as much as mine, and her grip was weak; I was overcome with a sinking sense of futility. My eyes filled with tears as I sat there helplessly watching my friend die. I couldn't even speak; my throat was so tight it was painful.

Charlotte spoke again. "The only thing I regret is that there were still several things I wanted to do that I never got to do. I never walked under a ladder."

"What?" I croaked, not sure I had heard correctly.

"I crossed the path of a black cat and I've broken a mirror, but I never walked under a ladder. I always wanted to do that. But if that's the only regret I have in my life, I think I did well." She smiled weakly.

Her detached acceptance of the situation only made it harder for me. I squeezed my eyes firmly shut, feeling another cascade of tears stream down my cheeks, and held on to her hand still tighter. My throat stung. "Are you scared?" I finally asked her, my voice cracking.

"I'm worried about you, not me," she whispered. "You're the best friend I ever had. You and Mandy. I want you to know that."

"Charlotte, no," I sobbed. With apparent difficulty she raised her other arm off the floor and reached out to me. I bent down closer to her and hugged her tightly, my tears falling into her hair. And then I noticed that her head had lolled back a bit, and her hand thudded to the floor. I sat up slowly and through a blur of tears I looked at her face again; her eyes were staring up at the ceiling, unseeing, the sparkle gone.

I could do nothing. My whole body was shaking now as I remained there, still holding on to Charlotte while I rocked back and forth in anguish. I tried to wake up from the nightmare, because that was what it must be. It couldn't be real. But Charlotte lay unmoving, her arm reaching lifelessly across the dusty floor where it had dropped. She would never wake up. And I couldn't either.

I had no idea how long I sat there. But I was spurred back into action when I saw Lester run by again and the noise of the battle eventually returned to my consciousness. I stood up with renewed fury and sprinted after Lester.

" _Crucio!_ " I screeched at him, wanting to hurt him and make him suffer for killing Charlotte, but nothing happened; I didn't know how to do an Unforgivable Curse. When it didn't work, I ran at him in desperation, not really knowing what I would do when I got to him but I hoped it would hurt. He saw me charging at him and pulled out his wand.

"You killed her!" I cried. My voice sounded quite deranged. "You killed Charlotte!"

"No," said Lester, so softly that I saw rather than heard it; a flicker of emotion crossed his face, but then vanished just as suddenly. He continued to point his wand at me and I faced him defiantly, tears still streaming down my face. "Do you feel nothing?"

"It was an accident," he said through gritted teeth, then fired another of those white-light spells at me. I cast a Shield Charm between us just in time.

Lily and James heard me screaming at Lester and ran in to help me fight him. By this point I had stopped bothering with my wand and was trying to strangle him. All I wanted to do was to hurt him as much as he'd hurt me. But he was stronger than I was, and I was on the verge of falling apart as it was.

"Melanie, leave it," said Lily. She Disarmed Lester with a perfectly aimed jinx. "We can handle him."

Just then I saw Nathan skirting around the walls of the building. I still wanted to hurt Lester, but Lily and James were dealing with him, and if what I'd seen of Nathan's action in this battle so far meant anything, there was still a chance for him to get out if he wanted to. " _Impedimenta!_ " I cried, and Nathan stalled. He put a Shield Charm around himself.

"Nathan, this is really what you want to do?" I demanded as I fired more hexes at his shield. "This is what you want to become?"

"I joined the Dark Lord because I believe that purebloods are a higher status of wizard and deserve respect. I didn't think he'd have me kill anyone – I never wanted to."

"You aren't even a pureblood! So why does it matter?"

"I may not be a pureblood but I'm not a Mudblood! We have some noble wizarding stock in our blood and that's something to be proud of. Dad's family is pureblood."

"No one cares about that rubbish except you Death Eaters. Do you really think this is worth dying for, or _killing_ for? Lester Avery just killed his sister – is that what you want to do as well?"

Nathan looked horrified. "No," he admitted softly. But then my attention was drawn away once again by Lester, who shot off a few more curses at random and then ran up to Nathan, grabbed his arm and yelled "Now!" and the two of them Disapparated.

The battle had taken a serious toll on everyone. The two Aurors who were still conscious slowed their running to a halt and stood there panting and despondent where Nathan and Lester had escaped from within their grasp. Lily was lying on the floor, a painful looking gash across her face, and James bent down to help her. Sirius was not where I had last seen him – apparently he'd joined the fight again, though I had no idea how. He was now sitting in the middle of the room holding his leg. I merely stumbled over to where Charlotte's body lay and hopelessly collapsed onto the floor again in tears. After everything, all four Death Eaters and Voldemort had managed to get away, and Charlotte had died in vain.

I became aware of a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Sirius. He was standing upright now on his right leg, a hastily made splint on the left; with his other arm he was holding onto Frank Longbottom's shoulder to stay standing. "I'm so sorry," Sirius said flatly, staring at Charlotte in disbelief.

"We did everything we could," said Frank.

James and Lily walked up beside Frank, followed shortly by Sturgis and Dorcas, who was conscious once again, and no one did anything but stare down at Charlotte lying there as if asleep in the rubble of the stone column – a solemn semicircle surrounding a fallen hero. I remained on the floor, holding on to Charlotte.

Lily finally spoke. "How did you find us in here?" she asked. "Are you Aurors?"

"We're not all Aurors, no," said Frank's voice. "This is Dorcas Meadowes and Sturgis Podmore. We're all part of the resistance against the Death Eaters. We have many sources all around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade – that's how we knew how to find you today."

Their words washed over me and I heard without listening. None of it mattered anymore.

I felt arms pulling me away from Charlotte, and I struggled against them at first, but they brought me to my feet. Some time later Lily, James, Sirius and I were headed back to Hogwarts; Lily's arm was around me, and Sirius was supported between her and James, hopping on his good leg. I didn't know or care where the Aurors had gone. I was walking as if in a fog, only aware of what was happening immediately around me. Numbly I watched each step my feet took; it seemed like someone else walking with my feet, because I didn't even feel my own legs moving.

The sounds of merriment spilled out from the windows of the Three Broomsticks… people who were still blissfully ignorant of the unthinkable tragedy that had just transpired at the far end of the street. I had nearly forgotten it was Valentine's Day; that seemed ages ago. Time had stopped when Charlotte died, and the seconds had become agonizing hours.

And then we were back in the Great Hall, still walking. I saw some people rushing urgently down the corridor. We kept going; I had no idea where we were headed, and I didn't care. All I could think about was that I should have done something more. If I had thought fast enough I could have stopped Lester and Voldemort and then Charlotte wouldn't have died.

The next time I was really conscious of my surroundings, I was in the hospital wing. Sirius and Lily were there as well. Madam Pomfrey had given me some sort of potion for shock, but so far it was having no effect at all. Slumped against my pillow, I did little but stare across the room.

After I'd been there a few minutes, or maybe a half hour – I felt wholly disconnected from the passage of time – the door was thrown open and Mandy walked into the room straight towards me, ignoring Madam Pomfrey's insistence that I needed rest. I could see the tears in Mandy's eyes all the way across the room. It seemed she'd already been informed, which was good in a way, because I didn't think I'd be able to say it. That would make it too real. Seeing Mandy crying brought stinging tears to my eyes as well, just when I thought I'd cried as much as was humanly possible for one day. Mandy didn't stop walking until she reached my bed and then threw her arms around me. We held on to each other for a long time, and neither of us said anything. We had lost our best friend – how were we supposed to ever move forward from that?

It still hadn't really sunk in the first time I went back to my dormitory, the following day once I'd been released from the hospital wing. Our room looked the same as ever, still had the same silly decorations, large posters of professional Quidditch players, a cactus by the window, a string of lights over the door that no one had bothered to take down after Christmas, piles of shoes on the floor, as if all was normal… The only thing missing was Charlotte, lying on her bed and rubbing the end of her quill against her chin as she scratched away on parchment. It could never be that way anymore, and it bothered me that the room gave the impression that nothing had happened.

Outside the window, it was raining under a gloomy grey sky, which oddly made me feel better, like the sky was grieving as much as I was. I blankly watched the tears of rain fall from the heavens and disrupt the surface of the lake with ripples. I opened the window and a cold gust of air rushed in, along with some rain, but I didn't care.

I felt like an empty shell now that I'd forever lost my oldest friend, the first person I'd met on the train to Hogwarts six and a half years ago. And I'd imagined she would always be there. I had never told her what a good friend she was. I didn't realise until she was gone just how much I had taken her for granted.

Never again would I see Charlotte's smiling face as she came to tell me stupid gossip. To think that I had always tuned her out when she started down that road… but now I'd give anything just to hear her talk about the most mundane rubbish again. No one else would mock my love of Herbology, tell me I looked like her grandmother, or compare me unfavourably with a shedding cat… it was funny the things you missed…

I knew that if she could see me acting this way, she'd probably have something sarcastic to say about it. She had never taken anything seriously. Not her homework, not Voldemort, not even death. I envied that about her – I doubted I could ever smile again.

"Can you shut that? It's getting cold in here."

I hadn't even noticed Alanna and Rachel entering the room. They were sitting on Charlotte's bed, Alanna holding a framed photograph. I closed the window and walked over to them to see the picture. It was one Charlotte had had on the table beside her bed, taken of all five of us as first years; Rachel and Charlotte were pushing their way to the front of the picture, and Mandy kept moving forward as well to put bunny ears on Charlotte with her fingers. Then one of us tripped and we all fell over in a heap. "I just can't believe she's gone," said Alanna softly.

Rachel sighed. "And I had thought the Dark Lord really knew what he was doing. I admired him – I thought it was noble to elevate the status of purebloods. But Charlotte stood up to him… and now I don't reckon he's everything he says he is. All he wants is power for himself. I don't like what he's doing to achieve his power… You were right all along, Melanie."

I said nothing. I didn't care about being right; all I wanted was for Charlotte to come back.

"Well, she won't need this any more," said Alanna, picking up the picture as she stood up from the bed. "Do you think it's all right if I take it?"

Rachel and I merely shrugged, and Alanna set the photo on the table by her own bed. Just then, Mandy walked into the room as well. "They told me you were out of the hospital wing," she said.

"Yeah," I said expressionlessly. "There's not a whole lot Madam Pomfrey could do for me."

Mandy nodded, then, seemingly because she didn't want to continue talking about Charlotte, she asked us all if we wanted to go to dinner.

Rachel and Alanna agreed, but I just shrugged again. "You have to eat sometime," Mandy insisted. So we all walked down together, Rachel's and my arms around each other's shoulders in silent support, all of us saying very little, but there was nothing to say. Charlotte had always been the glue that held us all together, and now, in a way, it seemed her death had brought the remaining four of us closer.

The Great Hall had been adorned with black banners instead of the usual four House banners, and the conversations throughout the hall seemed muted. The food looked just as expertly prepared as ever by the house-elves, but it didn't appear appetizing to me. The few bites I took of my dinner seemed tasteless and dry.

"Dumbledore made a speech about the war at dinner yesterday," said Alanna. "He said some nice things about Charlotte."

"That's nice," I said numbly.

As I shaped my shepherd's pie into a square with my fork, flattening it on top and then stabbing at it and then shaping it again, a trickle of people came by to speak to us, offering words of condolence. I supposed it was nice of them, but I couldn't handle nice things at the moment. It just sounded like empty words to me, even though I knew they meant well.

I was seated next to Mandy on the side of the table that Charlotte always preferred: the side with our backs to the wall so we had a view of the entire Great Hall. It provided easy viewing of the silly things people did. But no one was doing anything silly today, just eating sombrely and occasionally whispering. It would have disappointed Charlotte, if she were here. But she would never be here again. And I had let that happen.

These thoughts burdened me until the four of us had returned to our dormitory, and I finally confided in Mandy how much it was torturing me that I was partially to blame for Charlotte's death, and how I'd never be free of the guilt. She shouldn't have died. It could just as easily have been me, and probably should have been.

Mandy was shocked. "It's not your fault," she said comfortingly. "Just because you were there doesn't mean you're to blame. You couldn't have done anything more."

"I know," I said thickly, "but I still keep feeling that I should have. She shouldn't have had to die. It's not fair." What kind of world was it in which an eighteen-year-old died, at the hands of her brother, for standing up against evil?

"No, it isn't fair. None of it is."

* * *

The next day was Monday, and I couldn't bring myself to attend class, not even Ancient Runes. I skipped my classes for three days, and instead hid in my room, withdrawn and forlorn. I had lost the energy to care about anything, and I was still overcome with guilt about Charlotte's death. I wanted to run away from it all, to hide myself where I didn't have to face reality or feel anything. But there was no way to escape; I had no choice but to face it.

Mandy would bring food to me from the kitchens, and I was able to eat it now, but I still didn't have much of an appetite. Sometimes we'd just sit in the room and not say anything. Neither Mandy nor I were able to talk about Charlotte yet or we'd start crying again.

Charlotte had once told me that if she died she'd come back as a ghost to haunt me. I kept looking over towards Charlotte's bed every now and then, half expecting to see a pearly transparent figure smirking back at me. But it never happened. And there were quite a few times I forgot for a brief, blissful moment that she had died – and then I'd remember again, and it would feel like a cold stab to the heart.

Charlotte's belongings disappeared from the dormitory after a few days, probably back to her family. Her body had been returned to her parents as well, and if they'd held a funeral, we weren't invited. Maybe it was for her family only… the family that probably thought her death was a noble sacrifice for Voldemort. Charlotte had resisted the Death Eaters, and everyone else in her family was a Death Eater. They didn't understand.

According to my roommates, Lester also hadn't come back to Hogwarts since Charlotte's death. I wasn't sure whether this was because he knew word would get out that he'd been the one who killed her, and dropped out because of that, or whether he'd just decided he was done with school and quit to devote all his time to being a Death Eater. Or perhaps he was depressed and horrified at what he'd done. Regardless, he was gone.

On Wednesday night, Mandy didn't bring anything to me for dinner, insisting that it was time I left the dormitory. She offered to go with me, but I refused and went to dinner in the Great Hall alone. The four black banners still hung from the ceiling, and I could see all of them from where I sat on Charlotte's favourite side of the table.

As this was my first appearance in the Great Hall in three days, a few more people who hadn't seen me since Charlotte's death stopped by the Slytherin table to comfort me. Two of the Hufflepuffs in particular helped a lot; Octavius gave me a hug and said he wished he'd come with me when I left the Three Broomsticks so he could have helped. And later Althea reminded me that the same thing had happened to her earlier this year – and although her friend Artemis hadn't actually died, Althea had thought so at the time. And it had been Mandy and me who had helped her through her hardest time. Now, she said, she was here to help me because she completely understood.

"You told me Artemis wouldn't want me to be sad. Charlotte wouldn't have wanted you to be sad either."

"I know," I said hopelessly in a scratchy voice that hadn't done much speaking for days. Althea hadn't really known Charlotte that well, apart from when Charlotte had accidentally turned Althea's head into a watermelon, but Charlotte never wanted anyone to be sad.

"Remember you have help if you want it," said Althea. "A lot of people care about you and are concerned for you."

"Thanks," I said softly. She patted my shoulder awkwardly and then continued to sit there as if not sure whether she should stay or leave, but I appreciated it all the same. Mandy had given me space when I needed it, but I would never be able to get through it alone. Althea was right.

My eyes drifted about the room until I saw Sirius, sitting at the Gryffindor table next to James and Lily. When he looked up a moment later and saw me, he stood up, leaving his dinner there; he strode across the Hall to the Slytherin table. I hadn't seen him in three days, and upon seeing him again, all I wanted was for him to hold me tight and maybe things would be a little better. Sirius sat down beside me, and on the other side of me Althea walked away.

"You're finally out of your room," he said, hugging me firmly. "I hadn't seen you since you left the hospital wing on Sunday, I was so worried about you."

"I'm sorry," I said into his shoulder. I tried in vain to hold myself together, but broke down in tears anyway. "This should never have happened," I sobbed.

"You don't need to be sorry," he said, kissing the top of my head. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

After a few minutes Sirius suggested we go somewhere else to get away from all the noise of the Great Hall, so we meandered aimlessly outside. It was cold, but I didn't care – it was oddly calming to stand out there in the cold, letting the wind whip against my face, while Sirius and I stood together looking out across the lake. The wind had a numbing effect and the only thing I could really feel was Sirius's hand holding mine tightly. I felt so grateful to him just for being there. I didn't know what I'd have done without him.

"Are you going to go to class tomorrow?" Sirius asked at one point when we were headed back in the direction of the castle.

"I have to at some point," I said. "It may as well be tomorrow. Life is never going to get back to normal, but I have to do the best I can." I sighed. "Thank you for helping me cope with everything, by the way. I've just been so lost, I don't know what to do."

Sirius nodded. "You've been so strong dealing with this," he said softly. "It's not easy. I still can't believe it either."

When I went back to my dormitory, feeling much better after Sirius had calmed me down, I apologised to Mandy for having pushed her away for so long. She had only been trying to help me, and had probably needed my help just as much as I needed hers. After all, Charlotte had been her best friend too, so Mandy was hurting as much as I was.

"It's okay," she said. "I knew you just needed time."

"How have you been dealing with everything?" I asked.

"I'm doing all right. Not great, obviously… but I'm coping. Barely."

We sat there in silence for a while on her bed. Finally I said, "Mandy, I'm scared to leave Hogwarts in June. It's going to be like this all the time. We were just lucky, until Saturday, but that's what happens in a war like this – we lose people."

"But we'll be better prepared," Mandy suggested. "Not that anything can ever prepare you for the death of a good friend, but we'll be better able to face it all. And we have got a few months until then, and Voldemort won't be trying that sort of thing again; everyone knows he's scared of Dumbledore, and now Dumbledore is onto him after he tried to get into Hogwarts. We still have a few months here in the safest place there is."

"That's a good way to think about it," I agreed. "It's still out there, though. June will be here before we know it."

"And when we leave," Mandy said with a resolute gleam in her eye, "the two of us are going to get rid of Voldemort. We're going to do it for Charlotte."

We looked at the spot where Charlotte's things had been in our room. An empty hole that seemed to echo the empty feeling in my heart. It only made me more determined than ever to join the fight against Voldemort and help end the wizarding world's suffering once and for all. There was no way I was running away from this war now.

"I miss her," I said quietly.

"Me too," said Mandy. She leaned against me and I rested my head on hers, my eyes still glued to the spot where her bed used to be.

"Just before she…" I swallowed, unable to complete the phrase, and started again. "The last thing Charlotte told me was how much she valued her friendship with us. I thought you should know."

Mandy sat up straight again and looked at me. "Really?"

I nodded. "That, and… some rubbish about superstitions. She wanted to walk under a ladder." I could feel the corners of my mouth turning up as I said it, and felt guilty for smiling. But Mandy too was grinning through her tears.

"Only Charlotte," she said. "There will never be anyone else like her."

Lily was already there when I walked in to Ancient Runes the next morning, and today she'd abandoned her usual seat with her Gryffindor friends to come sit with me. We exchanged very few words in class, and it was only about the runes, but that was enough. She seemed to understand – all I needed was someone to be there who understood what I was going through and didn't feel the need to bring it up all the time.

I had Defence Against the Dark Arts next – the one class that, on Saturday, I had wished with all my heart I'd paid more attention to. I would redouble my efforts in that class; it would be a step towards what happened to Charlotte never happening again to anyone else I knew.

As I took my seat in class, I felt a dull ache in my chest when I saw Charlotte's empty seat. Tears sprang to my eyes again, as they so often did nowadays. And then Professor Thornhill started speaking; all I could think about was Charlotte's brief silly crush on him. Everything reminded me of Charlotte now.

But Sirius came over to take Charlotte's seat at the table with Mandy and me. Now that I was finally associating with people again, I realised just how many people cared. It wasn't going to be an easy process getting over my friend's death, but there were so many people to help me through it. I was surrounded by love. Sirius, Mandy, James, Remus, Peter, Lily, Althea, Hector, the countless others who had tried to comfort me… There was so much worth living for, and I was inspired. I had to pick up the pieces of my life and move forward, because that was the only thing I could do. I had never worked so hard in class as I did that day.

* * *

For most at Hogwarts, life returned to normal after a couple of weeks. Many people, particularly in other Houses, hadn't known her and couldn't be expected to mourn for a name they didn't know. But it was a long road for Mandy and me.

One day, I was lying on my bed, alone in the dormitory again, when someone parted the hangings and sat down. I turned my head up away from my pillow, expecting it to be Mandy, but instead I found Sirius sitting there. "I brought you some tea," he said, setting a cup of steaming tea down on the table beside my bed.

"Thanks… How did you get up here?" I asked. Boys weren't supposed to be able to get up into the girls' dormitories; Hector had said he'd tried it once and the stairs turned into a slide.

"As Padfoot," said Sirius. "Animals can get up the stairs just fine."

"Padfoot?" I said, confused. "An animal? I thought that was your nickname."

He smiled slightly. "That's right, I never told you… The nicknames all have a meaning. It's because I'm an Animagus," he explained. "So are James and Peter. You saw us that night, you know. When you found out about Remus. We were all out there too, in our animal forms. James is a stag, and you probably didn't see Peter but he was there too, he's a rat."

My jaw dropped. "You're all Animagi?"

"Well, Remus isn't, but he has enough transformation to deal with. But that's where the name came from – he's Moony because—"

"Because he's a werewolf," I finished, finally understanding, and amazed that I hadn't made the connection before. "Of course! And a stag – Prongs…" I shook my head in astonished disbelief. "And you? What are you?"

"A dog," he said. Then he turned into a large black dog. He wagged his tail and moved his head closer to lick me.

"You're a very convincing dog," I said, giggling as I turned my face away. "Dog breath."

The dog turned back into Sirius, and he was laughing too. I felt curious for the first time in weeks, and wanted the rest of the story. "So why'd you do it? And how?"

"Well, we had all noticed by early in our second year that Remus kept disappearing every month. We figured out where he was going, what was happening. So we decided to become Animagi so we could be with him when he transforms – a werewolf is only dangerous to people, not animals. It took us three years, but it was well worth it."

"That's brilliant," I said, amazed. Remus could not have asked for better friends than those three – they were loyal, caring, talented, and would do anything for each other. I'd already held the Gryffindor boys in very high esteem, but now I respected them even more.

Sirius smiled at the astonished look on my face, and I realised my jaw was still hanging open and hastily closed my mouth. He was acting so nonchalantly, as if his Animagus transformation were nothing. So typical of him. But despite how he painted himself as a carefree rogue, underneath that he was such a genuinely affectionate and loving person; he had been doing everything he could to help me through the past few weeks. I felt so fortunate to have Sirius in my life.

I picked up my cup of tea and we sat there talking for a while. I still didn't want to discuss Charlotte, and my throat would get tight every time something reminded me of her. But luckily Sirius and I could find many other things to talk about that distracted me from Charlotte, and mainly I just asked him about the adventures he and his friends had had in the forest as animals every month.

Eventually we decided to leave and head back upstairs out of the dungeons and maybe go to Gryffindor Tower with the other three boys and Lily. Sirius took my hand and we walked towards the door. However, the instant his foot touched the stairs, they turned into a slide and we tumbled all the way down to the common room. I couldn't keep myself from laughing out loud – a seemingly alien sound I hadn't heard in weeks.

"It's so good to hear you laugh again," he said as we stood up.

Some people were staring oddly at us from their chairs by the fire, and Regulus pretended not to see Sirius and was studiously invested in his textbook. Sirius and I hurried across the common room, until I stopped along the way to invite Mandy to come along with us and visit our Gryffindor friends together. So the three of us went to join the other four Gryffindors like we had used to do.

Even though we were finally beginning to readjust to life, the war occupied more and more of my thoughts now that it had become so personal. I hadn't really thought about it that much until I found out Nathan was a Death Eater, and then I paid a lot more attention to what was going on, reading the Daily Prophet with an obsession. And now that Charlotte was gone, another casualty of this long war, it was all I could think about.

But there was a dim ray of hope. Charlotte had been exactly the type of person Voldemort was interested in for Death Eaters – she was smart, talented, proud of her status as a pureblood, and stubborn – and she had thrown it all in Voldemort's face, bravely defying him. There must be others like her. Her death had even brought Rachel and Alanna, who previously supported Voldemort, to have a change of heart – and Nathan, a Death Eater, was having second thoughts. Someday, Voldemort could be brought down. And I was going to do my best to make that happen.


	35. The Long Road

February faded away into a dreary March. I worked harder than ever in all my classes, motivated by a desire both to pass my NEWTs with flying colours and to ensure Charlotte's death was not in vain. As Mandy had suggested, we'd now be more prepared to face what was out there. Professor Thornhill even made a point of mentioning the considerable improvements Mandy and I had made in Defence Against the Dark Arts in the past few weeks; it was because we had been having mock duels in our dormitory for practise, much to Rachel and Alanna's annoyance when they were trying to sleep.

We were going on as best we could. The loss of Charlotte still hurt me immensely, but with each passing day it became just a little easier to bear. I always sat on her favourite side of the table at meals now, in a way because I knew she would want someone to be entertained by the people in the Hall when she could not do it herself. And she would have been pleased at the sight today: someone at the Hufflepuff table had produced a number of straws, connected them, and was trying to drink pumpkin juice from someone else's cup at the neighbouring Ravenclaw table.

At breakfast Mandy and I would always read the _Daily Prophet_ like it was our job. We had to know what was going on – and it was never good. The Dark Mark set above a house in Kent, seven people at the Ministry of Magic found to be under the Imperius Curse, a disappearance… "Nothing new," said Mandy.

"How do we know who to trust anymore?" I asked her. "Look at this, one of the people under the Imperius Curse – his family had no idea! He would just go to work, sometimes kill Muggles, and return to his family and they couldn't tell anything was wrong with him! How do I know _you're_ not under the Imperius Curse?"

"You don't know," said Mandy, shrugging. "I'm not, of course, but how can you be sure I'm telling the truth?"

"Well, I think we're safe here at Hogwarts, but this is all going to be real in three months." I looked up at her from the pages of the _Prophet_. "It's going to be especially hard for you, you know – because you're naturally such a trusting person."

"I'll need to keep a Sneakoscope in my pocket at all times," she said.

I laughed. "Bet that'll be great. It will whistle all the time and you'll get kicked out of your job for disrupting the workplace."

"No, it'd be well practical." Mandy looked up and then started whistling. "See, it'd be like that. I'm a human Sneakoscope," she explained. "Someone untrustworthy just walked by."

I laughed; Vanessa Saltz had just walked by to sit at the Ravenclaw table. She had finally given up on trying to interfere with me and Sirius, as we were back together and contrary to her predictions, he hadn't gotten bored of me yet. So Vanessa was now dating Nick Smith, the haughty blond-haired Hufflepuff Chaser with an upturned nose, who thought he was too cool for Hogwarts. He wouldn't give the time of day to anyone he didn't deem worthy of talking to. Apparently Vanessa somehow met his standards… so really, since they were both awful, they were perfect for each other. Perfect because they were too busy with each other for her to stick her nose in my business.

"Thanks for that," I said. Mandy smiled and then picked up the _Daily Prophet_ again so we could continue reading the news.

It was certainly odd to think about just how much had changed since last year. To think that I had once been so scared to stand up for myself, and my main worry had been petty house rivalry. I had grown up so much in the past two years. Now, of course, my worst troubles were the same as those of the entire wizarding world: Voldemort. We were at war. People were dying, people I knew. And no one knew when it would end.

The past year and a half had also provided me with some of the greatest friends I could ever ask for. People who used to play tricks on me all the time when I didn't know them – and now, I knew the Marauders' biggest secret… or what I assumed to be their biggest secret. I'd learned over the years that they were no strangers to keeping secrets, and as far as I knew there could be many more. But they'd entrusted me with the knowledge that they were Animagi (and illegal ones at that, because they weren't registered with the Ministry), and I'd promised to keep their secret.

So life went on, and often I was able to enjoy it again. Despite all I had lost and all the grief I'd been through, I was in love. Love – which seemed like it had no place in a time like this, but it was what gave me hope and brought the light back to my world. Life was meant to be lived and loved to the fullest, and when Sirius finally led me up to the empty Gryffindor dormitory one evening, we did exactly that; afterwards I stayed comfortably wrapped in the warmth of his arms until morning, where everything was right in the world.

It was an odd balance between being happy in love, and on the threshold of war, but that was life now. Sometimes I'd find myself wondering about the future… or if I would even have a future at all – after what I'd seen last month, I couldn't be too sure. But in the meantime, my relationships were strengthened with the people who were still here. Hector and Althea and I began to spend long hours together in the library intensely discussing the war and politics. The slightly frosty friendship between Alanna and Rachel and myself finally turned warmer, as we had seen how short and fragile life was. And sometimes, I'd wonder what my brother was doing, out there serving Voldemort with that anxious look on his face.

One day in the second week of March I saw Nathan's owl fluttering above the table at breakfast; I was shocked Nathan would have the gall to write to me after showing up in Hogsmeade with Voldemort and then fleeing after my friend's death. I opened the letter anyway, not really sure what to expect.

 _Melanie, I'm so sorry about everything that happened_ , he'd written. _I hope you're okay. I don't want that battle to be the last thing you remember of me, so would you come to Hogsmeade tomorrow at 3 to meet me? It'll probably be the last time I'll see you for a long while. I won't have anyone else with me. Don't tell anyone you're meeting me. I know you'll be thinking this is a trap, but it isn't. Please, trust me, even though I know I don't deserve it._

Despite Nathan's request that I not tell anyone, I immediately showed the letter to Mandy, who was seated next to me. "Who does he think he is?" she asked angrily. "Of course you're not going."

It seemed like nothing but a bad idea to sneak out of the safety of Hogwarts to meet up with a Death Eater. But I remembered seeing how terrified Nathan had been after he'd watched Lester kill Charlotte, and I thought maybe he'd changed. Or maybe I was just wishing it so strongly that I'd managed to convince myself it was so. Either way, I wanted to give him a chance. He was still my brother.

"I think I might, actually," I admitted. "I know, it's probably a trap. But… something tells me it isn't. I can't really explain it. But I think it's different."

She looked at me sceptically. "Okay… I suppose you do know him better than I do, so only you can say, but… be _careful!_ I don't want this to be a repeat of Valentine's Day."

Sirius had the same reaction later that day when I told him about Nathan's letter. "You are not going into Hogsmeade to meet a Death Eater," he said protectively. "Please don't. It's too reckless."

The irony of Sirius advising me not to be reckless was not lost on me. "But what if he's changed?" I asked. "It might be honest. What does he mean I won't see him for a while? I have to know."

"But right after what happened to Charlotte—" Sirius argued, then stopped, glancing at me uneasily as he mentioned Charlotte, and when I didn't stop him from talking about her, he continued. "She was just meeting her brother too."

I knew he'd try to play that card. And it was a valid worry – even I was unsure if it was a good idea. "I know," I said. "But I think I'll regret it if I don't go. I'm not going along with his rules though; I already told you and Mandy, and he said to tell no one. What if it were Regulus, and you thought he might have changed? Wouldn't you want to talk to him?"

He watched me silently for a moment, then said, "Let me go with you, then. If you have to go, at least don't go alone. It'll be much safer to have people with you and people who know where you are."

"I'd love that, actually," I said. "Thank you." So in the end I decided I'd go there with Sirius, and Nathan would just have to deal with it. And Mandy, James, Remus, and Peter were all going to be hiding nearby, waiting around in case something happened. Sirius had told his three best friends of my plans and they'd all felt as he had – that if I must go, I should at least have support. And anyone who got on the wrong side of those four often ended up hurting for it, so I figured I was in very good hands. I had completely disregarded Nathan's requests about not telling anyone, but he'd have to be crazy to expect me to comply with something like that given what had happened last time I'd seen him.

So at a quarter past two the following day, I went to the one-eyed witch statue in the third floor corridor with Sirius and snuck out through the tunnel. It seemed much longer this time, now that I was not looking forward to what awaited me at the other end. With each step I took, I became more nervous that I was walking into an ambush. But we kept walking.

We snuck out through Honeydukes and began walking up the High Street. I clung to Sirius's hand, and with my other hand I gripped my wand in my pocket. After a few minutes, I saw a lone figure standing between Scrivenshaft's and Gladrags, and pointed him out to Sirius. We approached cautiously, listening for the sound of movement in case anyone jumped out at us.

Nathan looked up as we walked up to meet him. Sirius had his wand drawn, watching Nathan with a stony look of distrust.

"So where are your reinforcements?" I asked Nathan without preamble. "Other Death Eaters around the corner?"

"No, just me, like I promised," he said, eyeing Sirius warily, his eyes lingering over our clasped hands, before looking back to me. "But you brought someone else along."

"I didn't know if I was going to be walking into a trap," I said bluntly. "So whatever you have to say, you can say in front of him too. I don't trust you anymore, Nathan."

He smiled grimly. "I expected that. I was just trying to ensure that as few people as possible knew I was here."

"Why? What's this all about?" I asked. "I really shouldn't be here, it's not safe. I almost didn't come, after what happened last time."

Nathan looked ashamed. "I know, I am so sorry about that, I really am. I can't imagine… I only asked to meet today because I wanted to say goodbye."

"What?"

"I'm leaving," said Nathan. "I'm leaving the Death Eaters, I'm leaving the Dark Lord. I'm leaving England, probably forever."

"Where will you go?" I whispered.

"Can't say."

"You can't say because you don't know where, or because you don't want to tell me?"

"I shouldn't tell you, because that's not smart – if I told you, the Dark Lord would come after you and torture you to get the information, and then come kill me. I can't have them find me. The fewer people who know where I am, the safer it is for me."

"I'm not telling Voldemort anything," I said. Nathan flinched when I said the name. Even as one of Voldemort's Death Eaters, he was afraid to hear his master's name. "But if you can't tell me, it's fine… Will I ever see you again?"

Nathan sighed. "I hope so. I'm sorry things turned out like this, I just got caught up…" He sadly looked off at the horizon past me, and I realised how old and tired he looked now. "If it helps," he continued, "I'm going to be with my friend Habib Al-Sahhar. If you write to him, your owl will find me. Don't address _anything_ to me though, in case the Ministry is checking letters – because you know they're all infiltrated with the Dark L – with You-Know-Who's people now."

"Won't he have ways to find you?" I asked.

"I don't know, but I hope not," he said. "It doesn't matter, though; nothing could convince me to stay around. I want nothing to do with them anymore. I just had to get out."

It really did seem Nathan was telling the truth. And he had no idea what was to become of him when he left. I finally let go of Sirius's hand and hugged Nathan tightly. "Good luck," I told him.

"Thanks. I'll need it," he said, releasing me. Then he turned to face Sirius, his eyes narrowed. "You take care of my sister," he said.

For the first time since we'd arrived in Hogsmeade, Sirius gave up his effort at an intimidating glare at Nathan, and his lips formed the hint of a smile. "Of course," he said.

Nathan looked at me one last time, then Apparated away. To where, I had no idea. Even Nathan had no idea what lay ahead of him. I might never see him again, or if I did, it could be years away. But he had gotten out. He was free.

Sirius and I left the narrow alley and met up with Mandy, James, Peter, and Remus outside Honeydukes. "What did Nathan have to say?" Mandy asked.

"He left the Death Eaters," I told her. "But I'm not to contact him in case Voldemort is trying to find him."

"Good for him," said Mandy, impressed. "That's brave. And you always said there was still good in him."

"I just hope he's all right," I said. "I can't imagine it's easy for a Death Eater to just leave Voldemort and get away with it…"

"Well if he's smart enough to leave the Death Eaters, he's smart enough to know how to stay away from them," Mandy suggested. "Let's go to the Three Broomsticks for a butterbeer, it's freezing out here."

"Good idea," said Sirius, and all six of us went inside. We stayed in the Three Broomsticks for a while, and they all tried to ease my worries about Nathan. There was nothing I could do, after all. Maybe I'd find out in a few years what had happened.

* * *

After Quidditch practise one day later that week, I spotted the four Gryffindors walking out of Filch's office as I passed by in the corridor. I grinned as I approached them. "What'd you do this time, Head Boy?" I teased James, who was closest.

Then I noticed they looked a bit more subdued than usual, and I hoped it wasn't something serious. "What happened?" I asked again, though without the grin this time.

But I didn't find out, for at that moment Filch stepped out from his office as well, his eyes popping when he saw the scores of muddy footprints on the floor from the Slytherin Quidditch team, but only one muddy person: me. The rest of them must have gone into the Great Hall already. Thus, Filch decided that my presence at the scene of the mud merited a detention for befouling the castle.

This cheered the boys up considerably, and as they walked away laughing I gave them a rude hand gesture and followed Filch into his office to receive my punishment, the whole time reflecting that James must have had the right idea the time I'd seen him flying through the corridors after his Quidditch practise – he hadn't gotten mud on the floors.

I discovered soon afterwards what had upset the boys. When I sat with the Gryffindors at dinner, they were lamenting the loss of their map.

"Not that map of Hogwarts you drew?" I asked, shocked.

"Yes," said Remus. "Fortunately, he doesn't know how it works. James cleared it just before Filch showed up, so it just looks like a big piece of parchment, but Filch knew something was up the way we were all gathered around it."

"He confiscated it," Peter added.

"I'm sorry," I said, knowing how much they loved that map. "I don't suppose you could just make another one…"

"If it were that easy, everyone would have one," said James.

"Hey, it's not all that bad, is it?" I asked. "I mean, there aren't that many weeks left of school. And you already know all the secret passages out of Hogwarts by now, all the shortcut tunnels…"

"But it helped let us know where people were," Sirius argued. "It was the most useful thing we ever invented. We just looked at it a bit too late this time – we saw Filch coming and cleared the map, but it was too late, he was right there."

"And we reckon Filch knows about one of the tunnels now," said James. "We were standing just outside that one on the second floor when he found us."

"Well, knowing you four, I'm sure you'll find a way to create mischief without it," I said consolingly. "You do still have an Invisibility Cloak, after all."

"And it could be worse," said Remus with a smile. "After all, you have a detention tonight, and we don't."

"You don't?" I thought for sure Filch had given them a detention out of habit if nothing else.

Sirius laughed. "We weren't doing anything wrong," he said. "He was suspicious of us and took the map, but he can hardly give out a detention for standing around; that's not against the rules."

For my detention I had to clean the disgusting floor in Filch's office without magic. Worst of all, he was there watching me, so I couldn't sneak a cleaning spell in there like I had been prepared to do, after learning from my detention with Sirius last year that it was fine to use magic when we were told not to. Filch wanted his floor to be as shiny as the polished manacles he still kept on the wall, so I was there a while. The Marauders were at least lucky that they didn't have to do this too, and had only lost a map.

* * *

The last Saturday of March we left for the Easter holiday. As we walked out to the horseless carriages to take us to the train at Hogsmeade Station, I did a double take upon realising I could now see the thestrals pulling them. Their bodies looked like skeletal winged horses, but the faces looked distinctly dragonish. The one nearest me turned to look at me, its white eyes shining. It might not have scared me so much if I didn't now associate them with Charlotte's death, but I knew that was why I could see them. The curiosity I used to feel about them when they were still invisible was gone now. I shuddered and walked past the thestral into the carriage it pulled.

Luckily, my friends pushed the thought of the thestral out of my mind, when far too many of us tried to squeeze into one carriage. Much hilarity ensued as our carriage trundled down the hill, several of us sitting on others' laps. It was fortunate that Hogsmeade Station was not far from Hogwarts, so we were able to leave the carriages again before everyone's legs fell asleep.

Once on the train, the Head Boy and Girl had to patrol the corridors with all the prefects. So with Lily, James, and Remus gone, Peter, Sirius, and I got a compartment together. Mandy was sitting with Roderick in another compartment, and as soon as Peter realised he would be left alone with Sirius and me, he scurried off to find somewhere else to sit. Although amusing, this suited Sirius and me quite well and we enjoyed having the compartment to ourselves until James, Lily, and Remus all finished their train patrol and joined us in our compartment; Peter returned too after he saw that everyone else was back.

Eventually the sky began to grow dark, and the familiar rhythmic noise of the train changed as we slowed down. We arrived at King's Cross, and it was time for me to say goodbye to everyone and then find Mandy, who I was staying with for Easter.

"I'm not going to see you for two whole weeks," I told Sirius with disappointment after I'd lugged my trunk down from the storage rack. He reached up to get his trunk too, but I ducked under his arm, facing him, threw my arms around his neck and kissed him. Sirius rapidly abandoned all thought of getting his trunk.

When we finally separated I opened my eyes to see three Hufflepuff girls staring at us through the door. I rather wished the door didn't have such a large window in it.

"It doesn't have to be two weeks," he said. "You could always come stay with me for a few days."

"You know I'd love to, but…" I sighed. "Charlotte was Mandy's best friend too, and we need some time together for just us. I'm not leaving her alone over the holiday."

He nodded. "Then I'd better give you something to remember me by," he said with a grin, "so you don't forget me over those two weeks." He cupped my face in his hands.

"It'd be hard to forget you," I murmured, laughing, and we continued our goodbye, enjoying the last few minutes we had of each other's company.

We were finally snapped back to reality when we heard Mandy's voice coming from outside. "Get off the damn train," she shouted from the platform. "Everyone's left!"

I laughed; it sounded like Mandy was channelling Charlotte's spirit, as Mandy had never really been one to yell things like that. Sirius reluctantly got his trunk, then we stepped out of our compartment and made our way off the train to find James impatiently pacing around waiting for Sirius (Lily must have already left with her family), and Mandy looking rather bored. Sirius and I waited until the last possible moment to let go of each other's hands, and then we went on our separate ways for the Easter holiday.

"Sorry," I told Mandy, though I wasn't actually sorry I'd spent so long on the train saying goodbye to Sirius.

"It's all right," she said as we walked through the gate into the Muggle world to meet her parents. "I only aged about ten years waiting for you."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you filling the sarcasm void in our friendship now that Charlotte's not around to do it?" I asked.

"I think she'd approve," Mandy said with a slight smile.

"I _know_ she would," I agreed.

It obviously still hurt that Charlotte was gone, but we had reached the point now when we were able to talk about her now without breaking down. I knew we'd never truly get over her death, but we were able to move on with our lives. And she'd always be with us in some way or another; in our memories, as a best friend, as an inspiration for us to defeat Voldemort.


	36. Stepping on a Serpent

Easter with Mandy was not quite the fun and carefree holiday it had been last year, but we managed to have a good time despite the circumstances. And April Fool's Day was over the holiday this year, so I didn't have to worry about Gryffindors turning my shoes to stone in the hallway. I did, however, have to worry about Mandy setting all of the electric appliances in her house to make noise at the same time, which scared me out of the house for a few minutes because I didn't know how they worked and couldn't make it stop. I got her back for it though, when she tried to have her lunch and got so far as setting a plate of food on the table only to have the table swallow it all up and then belch loudly.

I then had to explain to Mandy's parents why there were now dishes missing from the set. Mandy's mother merely shook her head in resigned acceptance, but her father wanted me to do it again so he could see. Anything magic in the house was cause for celebration.

Aside from that, though, nothing extraordinary happened over the holiday. Mandy and I went on a hiking trip with her parents for a couple of days, which was fun. The two of us also tried riding bicycles again, like we had done last year, and it was much easier this time with the aid of Balancing Charms.

Sirius and I wrote to each other almost every day. It was so much better to talk to him in person, but I knew I'd see him again soon, and I did like having those two weeks with Mandy. Somehow, with just the two of us away from all the distractions of school, it was easier to talk about Charlotte. We needed that time.

One sunny day, Mandy and I ventured out to a cemetery in Brixton – an old and exclusive one, hidden from Muggle eyes by enchantments, and close to the residence of the Avery family. We had been unable to attend Charlotte's funeral, and as much as I dreaded seeing the finality of a stone with her name on it, we had to do it.

Birds chirped overhead as we walked among the rows until we found her. In a beautiful spot in the shade of a willow tree, six feet beneath the soft green grass and the wilting roses someone had recently left for her, Charlotte lay, marked only by a fresh grey marble block. An engraved border surrounded the words _Charlotte Regina Avery, Beloved Daughter and Sister, 13 September 1959 – 14 February 1978_. As I knelt down and ran my fingers over the letters, Mandy took out her wand and conjured a large bouquet of forget-me-nots, which we left at the base of that cold, impersonal headstone.

A few days after getting back to Hogwarts, a letter arrived for me in the morning owl post from the Ministry of Magic. With trembling fingers I opened it, while Mandy excitedly set down her fork and watched over my shoulder. I read the letter so quickly that I hadn't actually processed what it meant and had to read through it a second time before it sank in. I had been accepted into the training program to be an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries!

"Mandy, look!" I said, and thrust the letter into her hands.

"I know, I read it over your shoulder!" she cried. "Congratulations!" She hugged me and then we mused on what kind of work I would possibly be doing there. But the mystery of it all was what made it so exciting.

"The one thing that bothers me is that as amazing as this will be, I won't be out there fighting Voldemort, which I feel like I have to do. I don't want to be an Auror, I just want to help!"

"Maybe you'll be studying how Dark Magic works and how it's different to regular magic, and you can make it so that Voldemort's magic doesn't work anymore."

"That's not what I'll be doing. And you know, once I start working there, I won't be able to share it all with you anymore. I have to keep it a secret."

She shrugged. "Then I can just make up stuff I think you're doing, and you can't tell me I'm wrong. Besides, we'll still be able to see each other, we just can't talk about your job. That's not too much of a sacrifice… And it'll give me twice as much time to talk about myself instead," she added with a laugh.

Mandy had gotten an apprenticeship at Gladrags and was hoping to revolutionise the clothing of the wizarding world by combining her skills at Muggle sewing with magical sewing. It was certainly an interesting idea.

Our last term at Hogwarts felt like a blur. Because we were so close to the end, and part of me never wanted it to end, the days just seemed to zip by. Professors piled the homework on to make sure none of us was caught unprepared for NEWTs, and I'd be up until the small hours of the morning writing essays on scrolls of parchment as long as I was tall. When I got tired of working, I'd distract myself with work for another class.

And on top of that, I still had Quidditch practise. Hector too seemed to be going out of his mind; he had a much more demanding position as Captain of the team, and more than once I heard him reciting charms and jinxes to himself as he whizzed by me with the Quaffle during practise.

One night in mid-April, I was working in the common room with Mandy, Hector, and Russell, punctuating our essay-writing with vocalising our worries of what was to come. Despite that this was so far the busiest term at Hogwarts yet, I decided it was time to make a difference for once, instead of just talking about it as we always did, and proposed the idea of starting a fighting and defence group.

"We have to learn how to protect ourselves," I said. "Defence Against the Dark Arts as a class is good, but after what happened in February I think we all need to be better prepared for the real world outside of Hogwarts." I turned to Hector and Russell. "We should all do it. Mandy and I have been practising together sometimes, but I know how she thinks so it's really easy to block her spells. No offence, Mandy," I added, and she smiled.

"That's a good idea," said Russell. "I wouldn't mind getting better at duelling spells. But what do you want to do, just practise in the common room when everyone else is working?"

"Maybe other people would like to be involved as well," Mandy suggested thoughtfully, and then stood up. "Everyone!" she announced. "We're starting a duelling group. Who wants to join?"

Several faces turned to look at us, some with interest, some with annoyance that Mandy had just started talking loudly when everyone was trying to do their homework. Mandy peered down at me and raised her eyebrows; from my position still sitting down, she appeared to me like a queen critically evaluating her lowly subjects.

I stood up too. "There's a war going on out there, and it's going to affect all of us eventually," I said, addressing the common room at large. "And after the death of one of our own Slytherins, Mandy and I think we need to learn how to fight, and how to defend ourselves. So if you're with us, we'll be practising in… er, classroom eleven on the ground floor, after dinner tomorrow. No one ever uses that room."

"I'm in," said Hector supportively. A few other people mumbled and nodded, but on the whole, most people just apparently wanted us to shut up. That wasn't really a talent I possessed, though. And Jasper didn't help matters.

"Why don't you ask the Gryffindors, if you want to be all heroic and brave?" Jasper asked with a smirk.

"It isn't about heroics, Jasper," I said. "If you step on a snake, it doesn't just lie there and wait for someone else to solve its problems – it bites back. Houses don't matter when the whole wizarding world is at war."

Russell added, "Charlotte Avery won't be the last casualty of the war. And the next one is not going to be me either, if I can help it. That's why we're starting this group."

* * *

Somehow, we had been convincing enough that thirteen Slytherins showed up for our meeting in the classroom the following night, including, to my surprise, Jasper. After the trickle of people coming through the door had come to a stop, everyone looked to me.

"Er, so I guess just find a partner and start duelling," I said, unused to the feeling of all my fellow students looking to me as a voice of authority. "These are just practise duels, though, so don't use anything too harmful. You can learn from whoever you're working with. And if anyone has any questions or suggestions, just shout them out!"

And with that, people separated into pairs. Mandy worked with Russell, and I paired up with Hector. Spells flew around the room, and occasionally even people did as well; my Shield Charm blasted Hector backwards into the wall. He rubbed the back of his head in pain while I reached out a hand to help him up.

"Sorry," I said.

"It's all right," he told me. "That was an amazing Shield Charm, Melanie. How do you do it so well?"

"I don't know," I said. "Let's see yours. _Rictusempra!_ "

He blocked it with his own Shield Charm, but it wasn't nearly as strong as mine. It worked, and my Tickling Spell hadn't gotten through, but his shield merely forced me to take a step backwards.

"You're holding your wand too tightly," I observed. "If you release your grip just a little, you'll be able to move the shield better."

Hector's Shield Charm might have been weak, but his Disarming Spell was powerful, and sent my wand flying clear across the room. He grinned and then Summoned my wand back to return it to me.

"Hastings!" said a voice, and I turned to see second-year Camilla Rookwood waiting at my side. "Can we all switch partners?" she asked. "I've been working with a fifth-year."

I glanced at the girl standing behind her, who looked like she'd come off the worse in the duel, despite being three years older. "Yeah, actually that's a great idea, Camilla," I said. "That way we'll all be able to learn from someone else."

So I suggested to the group that we switch around; Hector went to work with Rachel, and I ended up with Russell. I Disarmed him with ease, thanks to Hector's previous guidance. Russell and I duelled, interspersing our spells with tips on how to do a perfect Bat-Bogey Hex or a noodle-arm jinx.

Across the room I could see Elliott Jasper duelling with Regulus Black. Both of them were very good, and some of the students around them had even stopped to watch. I couldn't help but be impressed at the precision and the strength of both of their spellwork. Slytherin House had some very talented people.

But as I watched, a slight feeling of unease overtook me. There was no guarantee that just because anyone was here at this meeting, that they wanted to fight against Voldemort. Some might be here to learn just in case they ever needed it for defence, or for other purposes entirely. Most Slytherins had initially seemed reluctant to participate in this group, after all. But as I watched Jasper and Regulus, I couldn't help wondering, if they did choose a side in the war at all, which side would benefit from such talent? By calling this meeting, I could unwittingly have been helping future Death Eaters get tips on duelling.

When we switched partners again, Jasper was the only one remaining without a partner. What luck. So I made my way across the room to where he was standing. "Jasper," I said coolly but politely.

"Time for a duel, Hastings," he said.

"Let's get to it, then."

" _Petrificus Totalus!_ " he bellowed, and I shouted " _Protego!_ " simultaneously to shield myself from his spell, which deflected and hit the blackboard, forming a small crater. Jasper was an aggressive opponent, unlike Hector, and I had to think quickly on my feet. I practised the Disarming Charm and the Bat-Bogey Hex against him, using the skills I had just learned against his attempted Conjunctivitis Curse. It was quite therapeutic to me, and probably to him as well, as we freely attacked one another with our best jinxes, neither of us caring about hurting the other, because we didn't like each other. We probably could have gone on duelling all night, but Hector finally separated us by casting a wonderful Shield Charm between us. I beamed proudly at Hector from the floor, where the force of his shield had propelled me.

When I stood up again I looked back to Jasper; as soon as he'd got to his feet as well, he inclined his head towards me subtly. "Good duel," he acknowledged. That was the most I'd ever get from him; I nodded back with a slight smile and turned to Hector and Mandy.

"It's almost curfew," said Mandy to the assembled Slytherins in the room, now that the noise of duelling had died down. "We should probably call it a night. Same time and place next week?"

I glanced around the room at the destroyed blackboard and crumbled desks, and then added, "And anyone who wants to stay and help us clean up, that'd be great."

But, although most of them thanked Mandy and me for coming up with such a great idea, they filed out the door, leaving Mandy, Russell, Hector, and me to return the classroom to its former glory. Despite that, I was quite pleased with the way our meeting had gone; I felt that I'd improved a lot just in a couple of hours. Working with several different people had challenged me to adapt my duelling strategy. And, it would all help me be better prepared for the real world.

" _Reparo_ ," I said, pointing my wand at a crack in the blackboard, and watched as it sealed itself. I turned to Hector, who was fixing one of the desks near the front of the room. "Hector, do you think you'll fight in the war? Searching out Death Eaters and stuff?"

He paused, leaning against the desk whose leg he had just reattached. "I don't know," he said. "I've always been against war, and I don't want to get involved in any violence if I can help it."

"That's how I feel too, usually," I said. "But someone has to fight, because the war won't spare anyone. Everyone is going to lose someone – you and I already have."

"Right," Hector admitted. "I don't want to lose anyone else, either, and my girlfriend is Muggle-born, so we're even more at risk. I want to learn how to defend myself, because as you said, the war hits close to home, but I don't think war is ever the solution."

I smiled grimly. "Neither do I, but Voldemort does, and he's on the winning side, isn't he? I'd love to sit him down with a cup of tea and tell him to call off his rubbish, but he'd _Avada Kedavra_ me in a heartbeat. If he even has a heart, which I doubt."

Hector laughed, turned his attention to reattaching a door onto a cupboard, and then said, "You know I'll always support you, Mel. I'm on your side. Someone has to resist him, and I'm really proud that you want to do it. But I can't. I don't want to put Althea at any more risk than she's already facing – we're thinking about leaving the country for a while, if the war is still going on when she leaves Hogwarts next year."

"I understand," I said. "And thank you."

"Thank you for making this happen," said Hector. "It's so important. And you know, I found out that Althea and her friends have got their own defence group in Hufflepuff too, just like ours. Ever since Artemis Jones went to St. Mungo's, they've all been working on protective spells together as a group."

"That's great," I said. "Voldemort may have power, but our side has got people who stick together – and that's what will win in the end."

As it turned out, our side stuck together even more than I'd thought: the Gryffindors had a similar group as well. I found this out the following week after the Slytherin duelling team's second meeting. Once the classroom had been repaired, the desks were all aligned again, and the previously-cratered blackboard no longer resembled the moon, we headed out, and ran into a large group of Gryffindors exiting a neighbouring classroom.

"What're you doing?" Mary Macdonald asked us, curious.

"Nothing anymore - we're just finishing," said Mandy. "Just spell practise." As we Slytherins filed out, there was some sneering, narrowing of eyes, and possibly a hex or two that passed between the Slytherins and Gryffindors in the corridor – nothing too out of the ordinary. Most of them all went on their way, but I hung back with Mandy, who asked the remaining Gryffindors, "What were _you_ doing?"

James shrugged. "The same – just working on spells."

"All of you?" asked Mandy, then grinned. "You haven't got a club for practising defence spells, have you? That's what this is, I know it!"

"Come on, you're not really that surprised, are you?" Sirius asked, still leaning against the doorway of classroom ten. "Gryffindor is the house for the brave! Of course we'll learn how to duel properly so when we get out of here we can fight Voldemort."

I yawned dramatically. "Oh, you Gryffindors think you're something special, don't you. But you're a little behind the times – _all_ the houses have a group like this." Well, I hadn't actually heard of a Ravenclaw group like this yet, but I would have been surprised if they didn't have one too.

"So what spells have you been working on?" Peter asked.

"Various things," I said. "We all help each other with what we're good at."

"That's impressive," said James appreciatively.

"What about your group?" asked Mandy. "Any particular spells?"

"We worked on Stunning Spells today," said Remus. "I know we learned it in third year, but it's such a useful one to remember. Practicing a spell in class doesn't prepare you for how fast you have to be when actually using it."

"That's what we're all about," said Sirius. "Fast and stealthy spells. You'd never know what hit you."

"So go on, show me what you've got, then." I waved my wand at Sirius, stepping towards him, trying to goad him into a challenge. And it worked; Sirius grinned and took out his wand as well.

James snorted with amusement. "Only you two would think it's a good idea to start a fight in the corridor, in front of the Head Boy and a prefect."

" _Rictusempra!_ " cried Sirius. His spell hit me and I doubled over, laughing.

"T – t – _tarantallegra!_ " I gasped between bursts of laughter.

"We'll just leave you to it, then," said Remus, and started walking down the corridor, Mandy following him. James and Peter stayed long enough to laugh at Sirius flailing about as his legs danced out of control, and me rolling on the floor, and then they left.

" _Finito_ ," said Sirius, regaining control of his legs, and reached out a hand to help me up. No sooner had he done so than he got me with another Tickling Charm. When I stood up again, I dragged him into the classroom the Gryffindors had just vacated, and then closed the door, in case Filch or Mrs Woodhouse decided to come prowling down the corridor. And then it was spell after spell – a Disarming Charm here, a wooden leg jinx there. I even turned his wand into a spear of asparagus at one point, which I was quite proud of, except that while I was laughing at him complacently, he was still able to use the asparagus wand to Stun me. Ah well.

"Prongs refused to duel with Lily," Sirius told me as we circled round one another, wands drawn, during a brief pause in our duel. "He said he'd never be able to hex her."

"Oh, well it's wonderful you have no qualms about hexing your own girlfriend," I said.

"It comes very naturally to me," he said, laughing. "I knew you'd be brilliant at your defence club – after all, we've always been good at fighting with each other."

"I know. I'm enjoying it."

And so we resumed; he jabbed his wand sharply and I ducked from whatever nonverbal spell he'd just tried, and Disarmed him. His wand soared across the room, and we both stopped to watch as it clattered to the floor in a corner. Sirius shrugged, then turned back around, tilted my face up and kissed me passionately. I dropped my wand as well and pulled him closer, our duel long forgotten as we got caught up in each other. This was a million times better than duelling, anyway – a much better way to spend half an hour.

When we eventually did decide to leave classroom ten, we tiptoed out of the room and quietly closed the door behind us, then Sirius grabbed me by the hand and led me towards the castle doors. It was a stupid idea, but it was also mid-May and I didn't care much about detentions anymore, we were so close to the end of school. So I ran along with him, through the doors and out into the night.

I felt so free. Once outside, I let go of his hand, skipped ahead of him and spun around in the grass until Sirius caught up to me; he grabbed me around the waist and twirled me around. The sound of our laughter echoed through the otherwise tranquil night air. When he finally set me down again, we walked hand in hand across the grounds for a while, and then lay down on our backs in the grass to look at the stars. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and we even saw a shooting star.

After a while it started to get a bit chilly, and I snuggled up next to Sirius, my head resting on his arm. I hadn't a care in the world; my life felt like a paradise at the moment. Sirius could make me forget about the scary world outside the castle walls, if only for a while.

But eventually, it did get cold out there, so we made our way inside. It was somewhere around two in the morning, so we took caution as we snuck back through the corridors, without the aid of an Invisibility Cloak or Marauder's Map. Thankfully, I managed to make it back to the Slytherin common room without being caught.

At least, I didn't get caught by Filch. However, it did not escape Mandy's attention that I had come back late at night with grass stains all over my clothes, and she gleefully teased me about it the following morning for a good fifteen minutes, despite my insistence that it wasn't what it looked like.

I couldn't even divert the discussion to Mandy's love life, either. She had recently broken up with Roderick Cadwallader, which surprised no one; then she'd decided shortly afterwards that she was taking a break from boys for a while, which surprised everyone.

As it turned out, that resolution lasted all of two weeks, and I was back to being unsurprised.

* * *

The Slytherin duelling team was just one more task on my plate during the busiest term at school, but there was no way I was giving it up. In addition to improving our abilities and reaction time in duels, I found that it really brought Slytherin House together (at least those of us who were present).

Another event that united Slytherins even more was when we beat Ravenclaw in our last Quidditch match, and then afterwards threw a huge party in the common room. The excitement culminated when two of our duelling club decided to show off in the middle of the party; they staged a mock duel, which ended when a stray spell cracked the carved mantelpiece over the fireplace and scattered a tray of Chocolate Cauldrons to the floor.

The final Quidditch match of the year was at the end of May, between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and decided Gryffindor's victory in the Cup for another year running. Slytherin had won two out of our three games this year – we'd beaten Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, but not by enough to counteract Gryffindor's impressive scores. Slytherin ended up finishing second overall, which was at least better than last year's third place.

And, true to form, Gryffindor had a celebration as legendary as always to celebrate their victory, and I snuck in, despite that Gryffindor's main point of jubilation was that they had beat Slytherin. I didn't care – I was there to see Sirius and so I could have a share of the plentiful food and firewhisky they had snuck up from Hogsmeade.

Seventh year was winding to a close, the Quidditch and celebrations and the late nights out under the stars acting as wonderful distractions from the otherwise continuous homework and studying for NEWTs. I didn't sleep much anymore. But after the success of the Slytherin duelling team over the past month, I felt empowered. I'd at least have the ability to take care of myself when I left school, and I knew I'd need it.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! I'd love a review, whether it's about the chapter, or the answer to this joke:** ** _Why did the scarecrow win an award?_**


	37. The End of the Beginning

Sirius and I were curled up on a sofa in the Gryffindor common room working our way through a crossword puzzle. I was leaning against his shoulder, absentmindedly winding about my wrist the beautiful gold bracelet Sirius had given me for my birthday a few weeks ago.

"I think twelve-across is Mandrake," said Sirius, scrawling the answer into the squares.

"That means the last letter in this one is an 'A'," I said, pointing to the word crossing it. "Warbeck… what's her first name, Celestana? Celestina? I don't remember."

"Celestina, that's right," said Sirius. I raised my eyebrows and looked at him – I hadn't expected him to be a fan of the crooning tunes of Celestina Warbeck. "James's mum likes to listen to her," Sirius explained with a laugh.

"So you say," I said in a skeptical tone. "But I bet you actually have all her songs memorized."

Sirius sighed dramatically. "I guess it's time for the truth to come out – I did write all her songs for her," he invented. "If you listen closely to her music, you can hear me; I'm one of her backup singers."

I laughed and we continued on with the crossword. "How was your meeting with Dumbledore this afternoon?" I eventually asked Sirius.

He set the quill down. "It was good," he said, then sat up so he was no longer slouching. "Very interesting. I think you'll be getting a message from him pretty soon yourself, actually."

"Why?" I asked. " _I_ wasn't the one who replaced the cups on the Ravenclaw table with Nose-Biting Teacups, why should he want to see me?"

"I wasn't in trouble," said Sirius. "Well, that's not what _that_ meeting was about, anyway. It was about Dumbledore's secret group that's been fighting Voldemort."

I stared at him. "He has a secret group that's fighting Voldemort? I want to join!" I couldn't let Charlotte's death be in vain. Ever since then I'd wanted to help in the effort against Voldemort, and it sounded like I had a chance now. "What exactly do they do?"

"I can't say, because Dumbledore is the Secret-Keeper. But I told Dumbledore you would want to join. See, he had asked Prongs and Lily about it originally, after everything they've done this year as Head Boy and Girl dealing with all the Dark stuff going on, and Prongs said all of us should be in – me, Moony, and Wormtail. And then I suggested you and Mandy, if you're interested."

"Of course!" I interrupted.

"I knew you'd say that," Sirius said thoughtfully. "I almost didn't recommend you for it though, because it'll be dangerous, and I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you. I want you to stay safe. But at the same time, I know how much it means to you to be able to help out in any way you can because of what happened to Charlotte – you've been saying ever since then that you want to do something about it."

I admired his thoughtfulness and respect for my wishes even though he disagreed with me. "Thank you, Sirius. I really appreciate it. It does mean a lot to me – thank you for understanding."

"But I meant what I said, you know," he said seriously, looking into my eyes. "It's going to be dangerous, as you told me once – fighting Death Eaters all the time." He took a deep breath. "I've changed a lot this year, you know. Being in love was never something I thought would happen to me, and it scared me at first; I have so much more to lose. Sometimes I wonder what I ever did to deserve the love of an amazing girl like you. It's made me think about stuff more, about how my actions affect more than just me. And as much as I want to fight in Dumbledore's resistance group, I'm scared of losing you. I don't know what I'd do."

This confession from Sirius left me rather speechless for a few moments; he had never been particularly introspective before. I had, of course, noticed that Sirius seemed less reckless than he used to be, but I'd attributed this to my becoming more reckless by spending time with him. But he really had changed.

I threaded my fingers through his. "I'm scared too," I admitted. "But I guess it's part of growing up. We have to face the things that are scary and difficult."

Sirius said nothing and kissed my forehead. As I considered my uncertain future in the war, thankful I'd have Sirius by my side, I realised how much I'd changed as well.

"You've made me a better person," I added finally. "I used to just do whatever was easiest in a hard situation, but you're willing to take on anything, and I admire that so much. You inspire me to be the best I can be. Everything changed for me over the summer when I left home, you know, and I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I never had much faith in myself before, but your trust in me made all the difference in the world."

I recalled what Sirius had said when he'd burst into the apothecary after me and told me he loved me, how almost losing someone makes you realise what really matters. And what mattered was that we were both there for each other, despite our trivial arguments. "Let's not break up over stupid things anymore," I said.

"Never," he said, and then laughed. "I'm sure we'll still fight all the time, but we can work it out. We always do."

I smiled. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Without looking away from Sirius, I took the _Daily Prophet_ crossword from his hands and tossed it carelessly on the floor. He wrapped his arms around me as I slid over onto his lap and kissed him. It was nice when the Gryffindor common room was deserted this time of night…

Or it was until Remus and Peter walked in with food they'd clearly just obtained from the kitchens, and saw us. "Snogging in the common room?" Remus cried in mock indignation. Peter eyed Sirius's hand on my thigh and added, "Get a room."

"Go away," I said, undeterred, removing one arm from around Sirius to wave a dismissive hand at them. I knew it was silly to tell Gryffindors to go away from their own common room, but the room had been empty until they selfishly walked in. "We're not doing anything against the rules."

"Yet," Sirius added with a devilish grin.

I giggled, and felt my cheeks going red. Peter shook his head and rather quickly disappeared up the boys' staircase with his bowl of lasagna. Remus stuck around long enough to tell us, "Don't get up to anything too naughty. Prongs and Lily haven't come back yet, so they'll be interrupting you anytime now. Good night!" He grinned and headed up the staircase after Peter.

* * *

As Sirius had suggested, a couple of days later I received a message from Dumbledore asking me to come to his office for a meeting. Mandy had got the same note, and I told her what Sirius had told me about Dumbledore's secret resistance group. To my surprise, however, Mandy did not seem eager to join.

"It sounds like an invitation to die, that's all," said Mandy.

"But what about Charlotte?" I asked. "You told me that you and I were going to defeat Voldemort, and do it for Charlotte. This is how to do it! And what about all the defence meetings?"

"If we live, you mean," she said. "I'm not going to be doing much for her if I die too, am I? I wasn't there when she died, so the image I have in my mind of what we'd be doing is running out and looking for a fight with Voldemort, and then dying. It was Charlotte last time, it could be me next time."

"That makes sense, I suppose," I said. "I'm still going to this meeting, though."

"You could die too," Mandy said quietly. "We've been so caught up in our plans, our great duelling club, but have we ever really thought that it's not going to be anything like this out in the real world?"

"I know there's that risk," I admitted. "And Sirius joined, and he could…" I stopped, not wanting to even consider that possibility. "The thing is, it's not only about Charlotte. It's about the whole wizarding world. We have to help save what we still have."

"I'm not saying that I don't want to help," Mandy insisted. "I want it all to be over too. But… I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because of my parents: I want to help Muggle-borns escape the war and get away. Or I can keep people out of the Death Eaters to begin with. I'm just not cut out for fighting like that – I'm getting better at Defence, but I'm still rubbish. There has to be a place for people behind the scenes."

"How are you going to do that?" I asked. "Keep people out of the Death Eaters, I mean."

"Well, I'm a friendly person. I can just have a chat with everyone who comes into Gladrags."

I laughed. "Welcome to Gladrags, my name is Mandy," I parodied. "Please do not join the Death Eaters. Here's your dress robes!"

"You could work there too, with that kind of persuasion!" she said, laughing too. "Maybe it's a bit far-fetched. But I'm serious about the first one. I'm lucky my parents escaped, and I want to help other people have that chance too, as soon as I can figure out how to do it."

"That's… a wonderful idea," I said. Muggle-borns were going to be in the most danger, and Mandy's idea had the potential to save many lives. "You should distribute leaflets at Gladrags," I suggested. "Something that tells people how to protect themselves from Death Eaters."

"Oh, and I'll put coded messages in. I could use the shop as sort of a base for the escape system." She grinned, her eyes bright. "I wonder how it'd go over with my boss."

I laughed. "Unless your boss is a Death Eater, I can't see why they'd be against it… And if I can do anything, I'd love to help as well."

"Thank you, that would be amazing," said Mandy. "I can't believe this is all happening, and so soon."

That evening, when Mandy and I were halfway to Dumbledore's office, we ran into Sirius in the corridor. "Are you headed to the Order meeting now?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. I was starting to get a bit nervous. What if they changed their minds? What if I wasn't up to it? I had only a vague idea of what I was getting myself into, although I knew whatever it was would be dangerous. But I was going to do this, for Charlotte. "You're going too?" I asked as he fell into step beside me. "I thought you already went."

"He's getting everyone together to talk about it this time, rather than having the same meeting over and over again with smaller groups. So there will be some new stuff I'm learning tonight as well."

In near silence we walked to Dumbledore's office, finally making our way up the spinning spiral staircase.

"We're going to go make a difference," Sirius assured me. He gave my hand a squeeze while Mandy knocked on the door to the office.

I'd only been here once before, the time after that watch had cursed Remus. Then, I would have given anything to know what it was… and now that I knew, and the cost I'd paid for finding out… But thinking of that only convinced me that I was doing the right thing now. The door opened and we saw Lily, James, Remus, and Peter already there, as well as Marlene McKinnon from Ravenclaw, and the Hufflepuff prefect Caradoc Dearborn.

"Welcome," said Dumbledore, looking at us over his half-moon glasses. He gave us a friendly smile as we walked in and tried to find a place to sit, and then he began talking.

"You have all expressed interest in joining a group to fight back against the Death Eaters," he said. "This is the goal of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret group that operates independently of the Aurors to gather intelligence about Voldemort and his Death Eaters." He turned to face me, Sirius, James, and Lily. "The Order was, of course, the group that discovered you were in the abandoned Apothecary in Hogsmeade. They were the group that fought off the Death Eaters, with your remarkable help," he said, inclining his head towards us slightly.

Then he turned back to face the whole group. "You are all of age, and responsible adults who have showed that you can handle what would be required of you in the Order, so I'd like to offer you the opportunity to join the Order when you leave Hogwarts. Normally we've tried to keep current students out of the group at least until they've left school, but as it's now June, I think it couldn't hurt to give you a few weeks to get used to the idea before you're out there in the middle of it.

"We have meetings every so often. Your tasks would be varied, and could include anything such as following or impersonating Death Eaters to get information from them, or figuring out how to prevent attacks. Our work is done when Voldemort and the Death Eaters no longer attempt to eliminate Muggle-borns or establish a pureblood-ruled society – when their side either gives up or they all end up in Azkaban."

A long silence followed this. Voldemort would never give up, and it seemed impossible to imagine him contained in Azkaban. So the Order was likely quite a long commitment. It was all becoming real now. All of us had questions, but we let Dumbledore's words sink in before we asked anything. And then it was question after question – who else was in it? How often would we meet? What were the rest of them doing now?

Gradually we began to get a clearer picture of what our future would hold: Meetings every now and then, whenever they were needed; a lot of information-gathering by being in the right place at the right time in the right disguise. And sometimes, fighting. It would be hard, but Dumbledore trusted us, which meant we were up to it.

Towards the end of the meeting, Mandy brought up her idea about helping Muggle-borns escape, and Dumbledore seemed very interested; he said it would fit nicely in with a lot of the other undercover movements by the Order, which heartened Mandy considerably. When we all left, I felt like I had a purpose and a way to help out in this endless war. I was not brave. But I was determined, and maybe that would be enough to get me through.

I went back to the Gryffindor common room with Sirius and we sat in one of the spacious window seats, looking out at the misty grey evening.

"I'm going to become an Auror," said Sirius.

I looked away from the window and back at him. "Are you going to be starting that training in the autumn?" I asked.

"What? Well, I haven't actually signed up for that yet. But I will."

I laughed. "You better get on that – you can't just waltz into the Ministry and join the Aurors on the spot. But I think you'll be great as an Auror."

"Thank you," he said, smiling. "I have got _some_ of my life sorted out, though. I just bought a house!"

"Wow, congratulations!" I said. I hadn't even considered getting my own place yet; there was just too much to think about for after Hogwarts. Mum and Dad had offered me a place to stay back home, and while it was reassuring to be on a path to reconciliation, I didn't know if I could live in that house while working with the Order of the Phoenix. I knew Mandy's parents would be glad to let me stay on as long as I needed, but I didn't want to feed off their hospitality forever. Now that I'd sorted out my post-Hogwarts job, maybe I should look into renting a flat. "Okay, so we're even," I said. "I've figured out my job for next year, but not my living situation."

"You could always stay with me at my new house…" Sirius said with a grin.

"Now there's an idea," I said, smiling too. "How'd you end up getting a house so soon, anyway?"

"My uncle left me some gold when he died," Sirius explained. "Bet the rest of the family was thrilled about that. They probably erased him from the family tree for supporting me."

"Well, see, not everyone in your family is that bad," I said. "Some of them cared about you, at least."

"There are a _few_ cool ones," he said with a grin, which faded quickly. "But then the rest of them… I last saw my cousin Bellatrix a few years ago, but I know she and her husband are Death Eaters, and I'd bet you anything Regulus is too now. Bella's going to be particularly hard to send to Azkaban; she's sadistic and crazy for power. I don't think the Order of the Phoenix has any idea what they're getting into with her."

"That's why they need you," I said. "They need people like us who know some Death Eaters personally. It's going to help the Order."

It had to help. Many lives depended on the Order, relied on all of us helping out in our various ways… relied on me. It was weird to think about it that way, but it was true.

* * *

The last few weeks of our time at Hogwarts were the busiest of my life. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my friends, because this was the last time it would be as easy as just strolling through a few corridors to visit. Later on, we'd have jobs and real lives and probably live in different towns, and even if we would be able to just Apparate on each other's doorsteps, there might be no one home. And then there were people like Althea, who was a year behind me and I'd likely not see her at all next year.

But my NEWT exams were fast approaching. So I tried to squeeze in a social life, Quidditch, homework, and studying for NEWTs, and even occasionally sleeping, when I could find the time. I essentially reprised my habits of sequestering myself in the library within a tower of textbooks I willed myself to memorise. Mandy and I quizzed each other about Transfiguration over breakfast, discussed only Potions at lunch, and practised Charms together before going to sleep. We didn't lead the most interesting lives that month, but it would pay off.

I rather envied James and Sirius, who were brilliant and quick to memorise things, so they still found time to turn the Great Hall into a tropical paradise one day, complete with palm trees, sand, seashells, and even a salty breeze. Filch was furious because the sand ended up getting tracked all over the castle. I wasn't sure whether I hated it for distracting me from my tenacious studying, or whether I loved it – it was hard to be stressed at the beach.

The end of June brought the very intense pressures of NEWTs, and then it was all over. There was a ceremony in the Great Hall before everyone left; all the parents came, and the four long tables were moved out of the way to make room for the festivities. Students mingled, saying goodbye to friends and classmates; parents congratulated their children and met up with their own former classmates… it was a very happy time for all. If only Charlotte were still here to share it with us.

Mr and Mrs Macintosh beamed at me and Mandy when they saw us, and hugged us both tightly. They repeatedly said how proud they were of both of us, and asked all about our year. As Mandy answered a question from her mother, I looked over Mrs Macintosh's shoulder and saw Sirius. He was too far away to talk to, not with all the noise in the room, so I smiled and waved. He grinned back at me – even though I was already happy as it was such a celebratory day, that one gesture multiplied my happiness tenfold. He turned back to face Mr and Mrs Potter, whom he'd been talking to, and I looked back at Mandy.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" she said, her face alight with joy. "We did it!"

"What a journey it's been," I reflected.

"I'm just glad I've had you as my best friend the whole time," Mandy told me. "Some day, thirty years or so into the future, that's going to be us." She looked out at the sea of people talking, some of whom had probably left Hogwarts thirty years ago and were still best friends, reminiscing as they were brought together again. I was reminded of the guests at James's parents' New Year's party who'd stayed until late in the night remembering their Hogwarts days.

"Of course it will," I said, grinning. We hugged each other, neither of us wanting to be the first to let go, and then we both laughed as the hug went on for an unnecessary amount of time.

Finally we let go, and I continued looking around the Great Hall at all my classmates saying their goodbyes. Rays of bright sunlight shone through the window, the sun smiling down upon us. We were on our way out into the world, a feeling both liberating and terrifying – because although it was sunny here at Hogwarts, we were entering into the raging storm of war, and there was no way of knowing what to expect. Today was about us, but tomorrow we'd just be pieces of another story, small parts in a big war. But I had wonderful people by my side and I knew we'd stick together until the end.


	38. (I) Epilogue: Sixteen years later

Thirty four year old Melanie Summerby sighed as she cleared a space in all the papers on the rickety wooden table, then sat down in one of the wicker chairs and rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. She was on holiday, visiting Nathan and his family in their small stone house in Morocco, but was alone in the house at the moment. Everyone else had elected to go to the beach for their last day there, but Melanie hadn't felt well that morning and had decided to stay home for the day.

A large pile of rugs occupied most of the main room. Nathan and his friend Habib owned a company that sold flying carpets, and they'd just got a large shipment in from their friend Ali Bashir, who, according to Nathan, was trying to convince the British Ministry of Magic to loosen the embargo on flying carpets. Nathan had said he was sure Ali would start illegally smuggling carpets into Britain before long. But until then, Nathan's house was a sort of storage for their carpets.

Outside the open window, the day was brilliant and clear, and a few trees swayed in a slight breeze. The wind ruffled several papers on the table, shifting them around a bit. Melanie's eyes were drawn to a photograph of hers that fluttered out from under a newspaper. She supposed it must have gotten mixed in with her papers last week when she and Mandy had been looking through an old photo album, but was surprised she hadn't noticed it until now. The picture had been taken close to thirteen years ago; a tall, handsome, dark haired young man was chasing a curly haired young woman through piles of orange leaves. She stopped and when the man caught up to her she hugged him and he twirled her around, laughing.

Those days had been extraordinary, both terrifying and beautiful. Despite the ongoing war, and the constant presence of fear that accompanied it, there was so much to live for. Melanie and Sirius had been together nearly four years, and Melanie had had no doubt they would stay together for the rest of their lives, however long that was. People seemed to be rushing into marriage in those days, like the idealists James and Lily; in war, they'd said, you had to seize the day because it might be your last – then the Potters had been faced with the unexpected responsibility of raising a baby in the midst of war. Melanie and Sirius held off on even considering marriage; they were happy how they were, and it didn't make sense when there were bigger things to worry about, not to mention that Melanie spent half her time away with Mandy, helping refugee Muggle-borns escape the war in Britain. So those days had been full of hard work, resistance, and sticking together with close friends. Sirius and Melanie were crazy about each other… and then it had all gone wrong.

Melanie pushed the picture out of sight; the memory of it was too much to bear. Less than two weeks after the picture had been taken, Sirius had been sent off to Azkaban for murdering thirteen people and working for Voldemort.

She could still remember the day she'd found out – it had undoubtedly been one of the worst days of her life. Melanie had woken up in an unfamiliar, bright, and sterile-smelling place full of beds, and upon noticing people walking around in lime-green robes, she realised she was in St. Mungo's. The last thing she could remember before that was when she was searching for the Death Eater Antonin Dolohov and then felt a sharp pain in her neck. And now she was here. She touched her neck; at least it didn't hurt anymore.

"Melanie, you're awake!" said a voice. Melanie turned her head slightly to see Althea Branstone, who was a trainee Healer. "You've been through quite a lot; you were hit with some dark curses and were unconscious for almost two weeks. Healer Metzger thought you were dead. But don't worry – you're fine, that curse has healed up nicely, though there's a bit of a scar now."

"Er – okay," Melanie said, still a bit groggy. She rubbed her eyes while Althea continued to stand by her and fuss over the pillows.

"There's… something else," said Althea nervously after a minute. "I really don't want to have to tell you this, especially not right away, but you need to know. While you were unconscious, a lot happened. You-Know-Who is gone."

"He's _gone?_ " asked Melanie, sitting up. "Gone as in dead?"

"Yes," said Althea.

This was thrilling news. So why was Althea not smiling? "What happened?" Melanie asked, suddenly overwhelmed with dread. There must have been a terrible cost to Voldemort's downfall.

Althea took a deep breath. "A week ago, on Halloween, You-Know-Who… he went after James and Lily Potter, and he killed them." Melanie gasped, but Althea kept speaking. "He tried to kill their son, too, but Harry survived the Killing Curse. And You-Know-Who disappeared."

Melanie could only stare at her. James and Lily gone? It seemed impossible. James and Lily had faced Voldemort three times and lived. They were two of the most wonderful people Melanie knew – how could they be dead? And Sirius must be beside himself with grief, because James was like a brother to him. Melanie wished she could have been there for Sirius when it had happened, like he had been there for her after Charlotte's death. But Melanie had been unconscious for two weeks, and Sirius had been alone.

"That's not all," said Althea. She took Melanie's hand in her own. "I'm so sorry… The next day, Sirius was taken to Azkaban for killing Peter Pettigrew and twelve Muggles. Everyone says he was working for You-Know-Who."

"Sirius?" asked Melanie. "No, he would never have… You're wrong. Where is he?" She turned her head, half expecting to see him walking into the room. Then she winced – that curse Dolohov had done to her neck was still not entirely healed.

"He's in Azkaban," said Althea softly. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to be the bringer of bad news just after you'd woken up, but you had to know."

"No!" Melanie couldn't understand how it had happened; that wasn't the Sirius she knew and loved. Althea had to be wrong. She _had_ to be. The alternative was just too horrible to consider – Lily and James were dead, and Sirius was worse than dead to her. So while the wizarding world outside was still celebrating Voldemort's defeat, Melanie was dazed and static in St. Mungo's, trying to process her new reality.

Although Althea had tried her best to comfort her, there wasn't much she could do, and she had to help other injured patients. So she sent an owl to Mandy, who left work immediately, Apparated into the hospital, and stayed there almost all day. Mandy couldn't do much either, but she did know that what Melanie needed most was just for someone to be there for her after her world had just been turned upside down.

As if that wasn't enough, the day after Melanie was released from St. Mungo's, some Aurors at the Ministry of Magic had been convinced that she'd had something to do with Sirius switching sides. Melanie had packed her few belongings and fled before the Aurors found her again, interrogated her, and then finally decided she'd had nothing to do with it. She'd spent the following two months travelling solo across Europe in an attempt to make some sense of her life, by doing something enjoyable to erase the pain of losing so much.

Afterwards, she had returned to the house that until recently she had shared with Sirius, and began to get rid of his possessions, sifting through their past. But, Melanie thought as she browsed through a photo album, there was _no_ way anything made sense.

The album was full of pictures of herself and Sirius – dancing, standing in front of Stonehenge, sitting together on a sofa wearing Father Christmas hats and tinsel in their hair, and balancing ornaments from the tree on their faces. In all the pictures, both of them looked radiantly happy, and their smiles were infectious. At the bottom of the open page, under the caption _James and Lily's wedding, June 1979_ , two pictures in particular caught Melanie's eye. On the left was a photo Melanie had taken of Lily and James, arm in arm, with Sirius as their best man standing beside them. The one next to it was also from the wedding, and if it hadn't been labelled, one might have guessed it was Melanie and Sirius's wedding instead. The two of them were dancing slowly, but far enough apart to be gazing into each other's eyes, looking completely at peace and in love. The sight of it only made Melanie start crying again. Everything had been so perfect then. How could Sirius have betrayed everyone he loved?

* * *

Melanie shook her head to try and forget that unwelcome memory that had just surfaced in her mind. However, she had merely slid the old photo of them in the leaves underneath the copy of the _Daily Prophet_ she had brought with her last Thursday, which pictured a man with long, matted black hair and a gaunt face staring back at her. He had just escaped from Azkaban a year ago, and the Ministry still had not caught him. Sirius looked so different from the picture of when he was younger that he was almost unrecognisable.

Having no wish to see this picture either, she folded the newspaper rapidly and threw it onto the chair beside her. The top papers on the pile now were a couple of letters: one from her parents, with whom she'd reconciled soon after Nathan left the Death Eaters, and one she'd received earlier that day from Althea and Hector, telling her how excited they were that their daughter Eleanor would be starting at Hogwarts this coming September.

Melanie smiled as she folded the letters again, then stood up and prepared a glass of iced pumpkin juice for herself and went outside to sit on the front steps, letting the view of the city clear her mind. After a moment, she noticed a large black dog near the street. It was just wandering around, but when it saw her, it looked at her for a long time, then bounded up to her and started licking her face. Melanie laughed and stroked it behind the ears, turning her face slightly away from the dog's tongue. The poor stray, it had probably been alone in the street for a while; it was thin, and had sand and leaves and little bits of wood in its matted fur. As Melanie glanced at the dog's face again, another memory returned, and she felt that the dog looked incredibly like Padfoot, Sirius Black's Animagus form. It even had the same grey eyes she remembered so well. But it couldn't possibly be him – why would he be here, and what business could he have visiting her now? She was simply not thinking clearly after discovering that old picture.

She stood up, and the dog lay down on the step, still watching her. "I'm going to get some food for you," Melanie told the dog. "I'll be right back." She walked inside, still holding her glass of pumpkin juice, but when she had taken three steps into the house, she heard a voice say her name. She spun back around to find not a dog but Sirius Black himself, just as he had looked in the _Daily Prophet_ photo.

Melanie screamed and pulled out her wand, dropping the glass of pumpkin juice and hearing it shatter on the floor. She backed up, but hit the wall, and had no idea what to do. In her doorway was the man she had been in love with thirteen years ago, who had gone to prison and escaped; she didn't know what to think about him now. Overcome with emotion – confusion, fear, even nostalgia – she tried to collect her thoughts.

But Sirius spoke first. "You're alive," he said, striding towards her. "They told me you were dead. I thought you died thirteen years ago. You're alive!"

"As you see," said Melanie harshly. "And I woke up in St. Mungo's to find out that you had betrayed Lily and James to Voldemort, and killed Peter and twelve innocent Muggles."

Sirius looked agonized, but Melanie did not allow it to affect her. "What are you doing in this house?" she demanded. "I work at the Ministry, you know. I'm going to tell them you're here, and then – then you're going straight back to Azkaban."

"No, you can't," he pleaded. "You don't understand."

"And why can't I?" she fumed. "You deserve it! You killed Lily and James! You betrayed them – your best friends! You were the Secret-Keeper!" She paused, trying to collect herself. It was all coming back now – how she had felt when she'd first been told of Sirius's treachery thirteen years ago.

"It wasn't like that!" Sirius exclaimed. "Please, just listen!"

"How could you?" said Melanie softly, her voice shaking. "I have no reason to believe anything you tell me. I can't believe I ever –" she broke off and let out a tortured sob. "The Sirius I knew would never have done that. I trusted you, Sirius, I…"

She was still pointing her wand at Sirius, but it was as unsteady as her voice. She moved sideways against the door, away from him, but not taking her eyes off him. Suddenly, at the worst possible time, she tripped on the corner of Nathan's pile of rugs and fell to the floor, her wand rolling just out of reach amid the shattered glass on the floor. Scrambling in fear to get her wand back, she saw Sirius approach and reach for it, so she kicked him in the shins as a last resort. He swore. "I was just trying to help."

"Well, don't," she said coldly, her voice still wavering, and moved over to pick up her wand.

Sirius offered a hand to Melanie, but she refused it and stood up alone. As soon as she had done so, however, her shaking knees gave way and she collapsed back against the wall. Sirius reached out and grasped her shoulders to steady her. She attempted unsuccessfully to push him away, and then with no way to get out of his reach, leaned limply against the door, looking anywhere except at Sirius. Her eyes focused on the mess on the floor, and she pointed her wand at the spilled pumpkin juice and glass and cleaned it up.

"Melanie, I didn't kill Peter or those Muggles," said Sirius. "Peter is still alive, he faked his own death. And I _never_ wanted anything to happen to James and Lily."

Melanie said nothing and breathed deeply in an effort to calm down. She finally looked up at Sirius, willing herself not to break down when she saw the anguish reflected in his eyes. She wanted so desperately to be able to trust him again – but she wouldn't, not yet. "Fine," she said, stepping aside from the door and out of Sirius's reach. "What happened, then?"

Sirius sighed and began his story. He had not, in fact, been the Secret-Keeper for the Potters, as Melanie had thought – they had switched to Peter at the last moment. _Peter_ had been the traitor who worked for Voldemort for a year and betrayed the Potters. After the Potters' death, Sirius had gone after Peter, who faked his own death, killed twelve Muggles, and then changed into his rat Animagus form and disappeared.

Peter had been living with the family of Harry Potter's best friend for twelve years as their pet rat. And then a month ago, in June, Sirius had met Remus and Harry again; he'd convinced them of his innocence, and they had caught Wormtail and tried to turn him in, but Wormtail transformed and escaped. Sirius had then almost been handed back to the dementors, but Harry and a friend had helped him escape on a hippogriff.

Melanie merely watched him impassively. There was a time when she would have trusted him without question, but no longer. She couldn't find any holes in his story, though. What if it were really true?

"I don't know what else to say to convince you," said Sirius. "That's the truth, what I just told you, whether you believe it or not. But write to Remus or Harry or Dumbledore and they'd all confirm it."

The thought gave her solace – there was proof beyond just Sirius's word. "I can't believe it was Peter the whole time," she said quietly. "I never even considered it, because he'd suggested that the spy was Remus – though of course, after Halloween, I assumed it had been you… But I do remember Peter always saying he was ill, or busy, and we never thought anything of it at the time… How did we not notice?"

Sirius looked back up at her. "I still feel like it was my fault… I told them to use Peter because there would be no chance of Voldemort thinking he was the Secret-Keeper."

"It's not your fault, how could you have known? Oh, but Sirius, why didn't you tell me?" Melanie asked. "If you had told me you switched to Peter as Secret-Keeper, I could have done something, told people you were innocent or something…"

"They'd never have believed you. And anyway, by the time we switched Secret-Keepers, you were unconscious in St. Mungo's, and the Healers said you weren't going to make it. One of them told me you had died. Then several days later Prongs and Lily died. I'd lost everything I cared about within the space of a week. I had nothing left to lose, and I couldn't take it anymore, so I went after Peter right away."

If she'd been conscious, Melanie knew she could have stopped Sirius from rashly running after Peter without a thought of the consequences. Why did any of this have to happen?

"We didn't even tell Dumbledore," Sirius continued. "Looking back, I can't believe we were so stupid."

"Azkaban for thirteen years, and you were innocent," Melanie said quietly. "I can't fathom how awful that must have been."

A shadow passed across Sirius's face as he looked at her, no doubt dwelling on some horrific memory. Melanie's eyes filled with tears, but she didn't look away from him as the tears began to stream down her face.

She walked up to him tentatively, until they were only a few inches apart, and Sirius gently pulled her closer; Melanie threw her arms around his neck and sobbed onto his shoulder. She could feel his arms wrapped tightly around her, one of his hands softly stroking her hair… Her own grip on Sirius was so tight that she suspected she might be suffocating him, but he didn't seem to mind, and certainly neither of them ever wanted to let go.

How long this lasted she had no idea. Eventually she pulled away, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. Sirius turned around for a brief moment, and when he moved back to face her, his eyes looked a bit watery.

"You smell horrible, you know," said Melanie finally, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. "Forgot to bring shampoo with you from Azkaban?"

Sirius stared at her blankly and then let out a sharp bark of a laugh. He grinned at her, and she was amazed at the difference his smile made; he looked so much younger, almost like the Sirius she remembered. And then, as if he were unable to stop it, he was laughing again, which only made Melanie start as well – and they continued for an unnecessarily prolonged amount of time until they didn't even know what they were laughing about anymore, perhaps making up for all the laughing together they couldn't do for thirteen years.

After they had finally calmed down, Melanie asked, "So how have you been since you escaped with the hippogriff?"

"Well, Buckbeak and I have been travelling around here a lot recently, which has been nice… We spent a lot of time further south too, got to travel around Africa. I've written to Harry too – I couldn't find any owls that looked like they were up for a long flight so I sent him a letter with a huge parrot."

"A parrot?" Melanie laughed. "Really? And it worked?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting, I would never have imagined that they'd carry letters too… Well, it's wonderful that you're in touch with Harry after so long." She smiled. "I remember when he was little, when we used to visit Lily and James. Remember when you got Harry that toy broomstick for his first birthday?"

"Oh yeah, I do. He loved that. Speaking of which, his fourteenth birthday is in a week, have you got the ingredients to make a cake or something?" He glanced into the kitchen.

"Erm, sure, I think so. Are you going to send him one through the post?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "With another parrot?"

"Of course, anything else would be boring after that first bird."

"This is the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard," she stated as they walked into the kitchen and Melanie began getting ingredients out of the cabinets. "It's a long way from here to England for a parrot flying with a cake."

"How else would I get it there? The one that carried the letter did just fine with the distance. They're big, they can handle it."

"Okay…" said Melanie, laughing. She placed a bag of flour on the counter next to the rest of the ingredients. "All right, that should be everything. Do you want me to help?"

"No thanks, I'm going to make it myself." He grinned.

"Are you sure?" she asked sceptically after a moment's pause. "I've tried your cooking, remember, and it's… an experience."

He raised his eyebrows. "You have no faith in me," he joked.

"I do, just not in your baking skills. But if you're sure, go ahead."

Sirius picked up Melanie's wand from the table and pointed it at a large mixing bowl, into which the ingredients mixed themselves. "So what about you, what have you been doing for the past thirteen years?"

"I'm an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries," Melanie said. "Studying space. That's about all I'm allowed to tell you." It was certainly more than her job's worth to tell anyone about her secret work in the Planet Room, researching magic and space. One of their ongoing projects was in creating antigravity mist, which some of her co-workers had said would be used at a yet unknown big event at Hogwarts during the year.

"You did end up working there, then? That's great!" said Sirius, pouring the cake batter in a pan. "And with you being at the Ministry, that means you can give the Aurors false information about where I am." He placed the cake pan in the oven. "I take it the Order of the Phoenix isn't around anymore?"

"No. I mean, Voldemort is gone – although some say he'll come back eventually and then the Order would start up again for sure."

"And you'd join again?"

"Probably. But I'm hoping he doesn't ever come back. I want it all to be over."

"Of course," he said as they walked back to the table. "So what else have you been up to? Is this your house? Why do you live in Morocco, of all places?"

"No, this is Nathan's house. This is where he came after he left the Death Eaters, when Voldemort was still powerful, and he moved here so Voldemort wouldn't find him. When Voldemort disappeared, Nathan just stayed here rather than returning to England, because his whole life was here. I'm just visiting with my family."

"Your family…" he said dully. "You're married now." It wasn't really a question, he just stated it.

"Right," said Melanie after a pause. "I married Archie Summerby, he was a Hufflepuff a couple of years ahead of us at Hogwarts. He was one of my best friends when I was in fifth year." It felt odd to discuss her husband with the man she would have married had everything not fallen apart all those years ago…

Sirius sighed and said nothing. He walked by the table in silence, away from her, a scowl deepening on his face. Melanie could sense him closing off to sulk silently by the window. But she didn't want him to be angry with her.

"Sirius."

"What?" he said agitatedly, still evading looking at her.

Melanie walked back into the kitchen and rummaged in the pile of papers on the table. "Look. I still have this," she said, drawing out the picture of herself and Sirius in the leaves and handed it to him. "I didn't forget, you know. I tried to, but… part of me still loved you, even though I knew I shouldn't. I hated that I kept hanging on… Even after what I'd heard you had done, I couldn't get rid of everything; for the longest time I kept telling myself it wasn't true."

He frowned. "Melanie—"

"I know you didn't do it, Sirius. But I didn't know that then. I had no idea what to do."

His tone became harsh. "So you went off and married some random bloke? I don't even know who he is. I'm a complete stranger to your life now." He tossed the photo back on the table.

"Sirius, you can't blame me!" she cried. "You were in Azkaban for life, was I supposed to stay alone and never get over you?"

Melanie had met Archie again on her escapist trip across Europe, where Archie had also been travelling. It was good to see an old friend who could lighten some of the weight on her heart, and over time their friendship had blossomed into love. She'd struggled to get over Sirius, but eventually buried those feelings in the past as she moved forward with Archie. But now her past had resurfaced.

She reached out and took his hand. "If you were in my place and I had gone to Azkaban, you would have done the same, right? You would have eventually moved on?"

"No, I wouldn't."

Melanie sighed. She knew he was just saying that because he was bitter, but his words were probably a little bit true – if it had all been reversed, Sirius would have shut himself away for months at least.

With no idea what else to say, Melanie lifted the old photo off the table where Sirius had thrown it down, and watched the younger Sirius and herself laughing as they ran through the autumn leaves, happy and carefree. How could they ever have known then what devastation would occur less than two weeks afterwards? She set it down on the table again and watched Sirius standing by the window.

Eventually, although still with a hint of bitterness, Sirius asked her, "Are you happy?"

As much as she wished she could change some things that happened thirteen years ago, Melanie couldn't imagine her life without the people in it now. She loved Archie, and she loved their children, but she couldn't deny she still felt something for Sirius. How could she even begin to explain how she felt?

"Yes, I am," said Melanie after a pause. "A lot of things happened that were beyond our control, like Voldemort, and a war, and friends dying, and you getting sent away, and none of those were easy. But I wouldn't change anything about how I've lived my life."

Sirius was silent and started to walk away again. "Sorry," said Melanie blankly.

He sighed and turned around. "No, I'm sorry. I'm glad you're happy," he said, looking defeated. "Really I am. You deserve it."

Melanie went to stand next to him, at a loss for words. His hand was resting on the worktop and Melanie put her own hand over his, giving it a light squeeze. Sirius met her eyes at last and gave her a small smile.

He looked around the room, as if trying to find something else to discuss; his gaze finally rested on a side table by the sofa where there were numerous framed and slightly dusty pictures. There was one of Nathan and his wife Amira, several of Nathan and Amira's daughter Leila at different ages, another of Nathan and Melanie building a mud fort when they were little kids, and next to this was a small photo of Melanie and Archie and their two children. On the left of the photo was six-year-old Brian, his face scrunched up as he tried to escape from to escape from his eight-year-old sister Sylvia, who was laughing and attempting to hold him still in the picture.

"Where is everyone right now?" Sirius asked.

"They all went to the beach for the day."

"I'll have to leave before then, I suppose. Hopefully they'll all be late coming back," said Sirius. Melanie laughed. "So how is Mandy Macintosh?" Sirius continued. "I assume that you still talk to her a lot?"

"Oh, of course," said Melanie, smiling. "Mandy Stebbins, now – we're actually neighbours, and we travel together too every once in a while."

"Well next time you two travel you should definitely come visit me and Buckbeak on some fantastic tropical island, or maybe we'll be in Australia or something by then."

"It sounds nice. But I think I smell something burning…"

Sirius turned around to look at the oven. "When did I put that cake in?"

"I don't know, you said you could handle it yourself," Melanie teased.

Sirius walked over to the oven and removed the cake, and quickly put out the flames. It was the most horrid, misshapen mass Melanie had ever seen, and did not strongly resemble a cake.

"That turned out well, didn't it?" said Sirius, setting the cake down on the table.

Melanie grinned. "It's lovely. I mean it, you could sell stuff like this, start a cake shop…"

"Oi, you think I improved my baking skills in Azkaban? Or when I was hiding as a dog?"

"You never knew how to bake anyway."

"Well, I never needed to. You were always much better at it than I was."

"It won't hurt you to learn, then, especially if you're making this for Harry." She walked over to the worktop and began cleaning up the mess of flour from the cake. "You can make another one if you want. Are you sure you don't want help this time?"

"Yeah, I think I'll try again," he said, turning around next to her to face the counter. "And thanks, it would be great to have help from someone who actually knows what she's doing. All right, where did you put all the ingredients?" He leaned over and reached his arm behind her, around her waist, resting his hand for a moment on the small of her back.

"Sirius!" she laughed, slapping him playfully. "What are you doing!"

He continued reaching his arm around her and grabbed the mixing bowl that was next to her on the worktop. "I'm just getting this," he grinned.

Melanie shook her head, laughing. "You haven't changed at all." She picked up the bag of flour, and the two of them set to work baking a cake. It was almost as if they were young again and nothing had really happened – as if Voldemort wasn't around. They spent wonderful, carefree hours baking the cake, talking, reminiscing, eating the parts of the first cake that weren't burned, and dancing about the kitchen, their laughter echoing through the house.

It had been just like this before Sirius was taken away, Melanie thought as Sirius flicked burnt cake crumbs across the table at her. And it was so easy for her to feel the same way she'd felt then. For thirteen years, she had managed to forget about him sometimes, but it was all rushing back now. Only hours ago she'd found out Sirius's real story, and already Melanie felt as if she'd never stopped loving him. She never could. And that only made her more confused, because she loved Archie too.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Sirius, pausing his onslaught of cake crumbs. "You looked so… serious." He grinned at what he clearly thought was a clever pun, even after all these years.

"Just thinking about how bad that joke is. You know, I don't think you escaped from Azkaban at all – I think you told that joke too many times and they finally got tired of it and kicked you out." She laughed, and then added, "I was also thinking about how I'm covered in bits of cake. Thanks for that." She stood up and a shower of crumbs cascaded off her.

"What a slob," said Sirius facetiously. Melanie picked up a spoon covered in icing and pointed it threateningly at him, and they passed the next few minutes chasing each other through the kitchen with icing, running around and laughing like misbehaved children. Throughout the afternoon, Melanie felt all her worries and grief disappear as she was finally able to spend time with Sirius again and to know that he had been innocent. It seemed that, at least for the moment, Sirius was happy too, despite the circumstances. In the back of Melanie's mind, she knew that this return to the past would only be ephemeral, but she pushed the thought out of her mind to enjoy the short time she had with Sirius for all it was worth.

* * *

The afternoon was getting late. They had just finished decorating the cake with colourful icing, and now it sat on the table ready to be sent off to England tied to the legs of a very unlucky parrot. Melanie stood up and walked towards the window, anxiously anticipating Archie's arrival. But no one was coming yet. She hadn't heard any noise – and with that group, she'd hear them a mile away.

Melanie turned around and spotted the old photo of the two of them. She lifted it from the table, watching their younger selves run around again, and then handed it to Sirius. "This is for you," she said.

"Are you sure?" he asked, surprised. He looked down at the picture and smiled. "Thank you." He set the picture next to the cake on the table and hugged Melanie tightly.

They held on to each other for a long time, but finally jumped apart when there was a loud _crack_ from outside. "That's everyone back again," Melanie said quickly, her heart pounding. "You should go – I don't think this would go over too well with everyone." She pointed her wand at the cake and a box formed around it, which she gave to Sirius.

They stood and looked at each other for a moment, thinking of the things they would have said if there was more time.

"I'll see you later sometime," said Melanie, and then leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Now go, before they come in!"

"I love you," he said.

"I…" Melanie began, unsure of what to say, although she knew she should say something. She could still feel the spark between them, but it could never be; she wished Sirius had just left it unsaid. But then the doorknob rattled. "Impeccable timing you've got," she said. "As always."

Sirius grabbed the box and the picture, and Disapparated with a _crack_ , leaving Melanie alone in the kitchen with Sirius's words still echoing in her mind. In haste she seized her wand and performed a quick cleaning charm on the kitchen, Vanishing the remainder of the first cake.

Everything that day had happened so fast. Melanie stood there for the next few seconds facing the stove, too emotionally drained to even think. Sirius's unforeseen visit had been both wonderful and painful. She had never expected to see him again, and had been entirely unprepared for all the memories and feelings flooding back; it was bittersweet. But she had to get over it soon, because the loud party of her family had just come in through the door.

At the sound of footsteps running into the room, she turned around, and was faced with Brian carrying an enormous length of seaweed. Sylvia followed him, covered in sand and tracking it all over the room. Nathan was carrying Leila on his back, and she had draped his hair with seaweed and was squealing in laughter as it got in Nathan's eyes; behind them, Amira was brushing sand out of the fold in her headscarf. Archie walked in after them, smiling, and wrapped Melanie in his arms. She hugged him tightly, and with her forehead resting against his shoulder, took a moment to compose herself.

Her moment was short-lived, as she felt a slimy presence on her arm and looked up to see Brian proudly displaying his kelp treasure. "Did you have a good time at the beach today?" Melanie asked, ruffling Brian's hair.

"Yeah, we found a jellyfish," said Brian, and turned around to put the seaweed on the worktop. "It smells like cake in here! Mum, did you make a cake? Can I have some cake?"

"That wasn't a jellyfish," Sylvia argued as she took off her shoes and dumped them unceremoniously in the middle of the floor along with a great heap of sand.

"Well what was it then?" asked Leila.

"It was a baby Grindylow," Sylvia insisted. "If you'd have touched it, you would have grown fangs."

"Eww," said Leila.

"Really?" asked Brian, agog. "Cool! We have to go back, I want to find another one!"

Melanie laughed. "I really missed out, didn't I?"

"We can go back tomorrow," said Archie. "Are you feeling better?"

Melanie took a moment to think of an answer. "Well, it was… er… I don't know. Not what I expected." Honestly, she didn't know if she was feeling better. Physically, she was fine, but the combined emotion of Sirius arriving and then so rapidly having to depart again had left her quite disorientated.

"How so?"

"I'll tell you later. It's a long story." It wasn't a good time to reveal her estranged escaped-convict ex-boyfriend's visit, but she needed to tell someone she could trust. And Archie would believe her – there was one more person who would know of Sirius' innocence.

"Mel, what's last week's _Prophet_ doing on the table?" Nathan interrupted. "You don't still need this, do you?"

"No. I forgot about it."

Melanie took two steps towards the table and tripped on Sylvia's shoes. She clutched the table to avoid falling. "Sylvia, please do something about your shoes," she said. "And Brian, why don't you take that piece of seaweed outside?"

"No thank you," said Brian, and ran after his cousin out of the room.

Melanie rolled her eyes at Archie. "I suppose it adds to the décor," she said.

"He'll take it away when the kitchen starts smelling like seaweed," Archie suggested. "Or if we dry it, maybe we can make sushi. Wonder if it's edible?"

"Our kids are a disaster," said Melanie. "What happens when they start at Hogwarts? I just know Sylvia's going to lose her shoes in the Great Hall one day and never get them back."

"Oh, she does take after her mother," Archie teased. "You ran around Hogwarts barefoot too – yes, I know about that, Mandy told me what your friends did to you on April Fool's Day during your sixth year."

Melanie snorted. "I'd forgotten about that."

"You never told me that story," said Sylvia eagerly, stepping back into the room, her eyes twinkling. "Did you get in trouble, Mum?"

"A little. I lost a few points for Slytherin," Melanie admitted. Then she frowned slightly. "Don't you get any ideas now," she joked. She wouldn't put it past Sylvia to start out her time at Hogwarts in a few years by hexing someone's shoes away just to see if they'd get caught.

Sylvia went off to play in the yard with Leila and Brian, and Melanie walked over to the window. Somewhere, Sirius was out there. It was unlikely that the Ministry would stop hunting him anytime soon, because the case against him was so strong with no living witnesses other than Peter Pettigrew, who everyone still believed to be dead by Sirius's hand. So Sirius would probably on the run for a while.

And what would happen if they saw each other again? It could never be the same as it was all those years ago, and Melanie didn't know how to adjust to whatever it was now. The truth was that she was very happy with Archie, but now that she had Sirius back in her life she didn't want to let him go again.

Maybe she'd write to him. She hoped they could stay friends, and that she could see him again when he returned to England. Eventually his name would be cleared of the crimes he had not committed, and he could go back to a normal life like he deserved. It would turn out all right in the end.

* * *

 **A/N: The epilogue is in two parts, so this isn't** ** _quite_** **the end yet.** **So uhh... love it? Hate it? Let me know! Thanks for reading!**


	39. (II) In the End

13 September 1995

Sirius set the empty firewhisky bottle on the dusty table with a clunk, and rested his head in his hands. He looked across to the other end of the dingy kitchen, where a pile of dirty dishes lay strewn about the counter near the sink. There was no reason to clean it up – it wasn't like anyone was there to judge him for it.

It had been like this ever since Harry and Hermione and all the Weasleys had left a week ago to return to Hogwarts, and the others had departed to do some work for the Order. Only a week and he was already bored out of his mind, aching to leave. It had been wonderful to have so many people here, but now he was back to day after day of being imprisoned inside his family's old house – a place that, as a teenager, he had sworn he would never come back to. But here he was, trapped inside indefinitely and not allowed out. Everyone else was risking their lives, and Sirius felt completely useless and miserable. He wanted to help, to do anything but sit here.

It would have been mildly acceptable if he hadn't been alone. But it was just him. Him and the old house he hated, and nothing but a now empty bottle of Firewhisky to keep him company. And Kreacher, the old house-elf, skulking around upstairs and muttering foul things under his breath, bringing back unhappy memories. It was enough to drive anyone mad.

Sirius missed the days when, despite being the Ministry's most wanted man, he'd felt free and able to travel all around North Africa while on the run. Voldemort hadn't returned yet by that point. And Sirius had been corresponding by owl with a few people over the past year – Harry, Dumbledore, Remus, and Melanie. It had been so easy compared to now.

Since last summer when he'd unexpectedly found Melanie in Morocco, they had been writing back and forth, and she had even occasionally come to visit him in the miserable cave in Scotland where he'd lived for much of the year. Her first visit was rather emotional and confusing; they had kissed once, and to Sirius it was like a breath of fresh air for a drowning man. But Melanie had pulled away too soon, overcome with guilt; she was married, after all. Afterwards, they'd managed to avoid that path, and maintained a solid friendship. It was nice to be close to someone again, even if not in the way he would have liked. And as much as it hurt sometimes to see her, knowing that she was out of his reach and things could never return to the way they had been, at least he had a great friend – and that was enough, after the hell of so many years of solitude.

Often, when Melanie visited, Remus and Mandy came along as well, and they brought food – it was almost like old times, surrounded by his friends, or at least those that were still alive. But it had been months since then, since he'd moved back to this old house. Hopefully, things would be changing soon; about a week ago he'd gotten a response to his letter in which he'd invited Melanie to come visit him and reminded her to rejoin the Order of the Phoenix now that Voldemort had returned.

She should have been here a few days ago, though. Sirius took her letter out of his pocket and smoothed it out on the table to re-read it.

 _Of course I'll come back and join the Order! Dumbledore wrote to me about it last month, but I didn't come then because I've been so busy at work – there's some weird stuff going on. I actually had been nervous about joining the Order again, because what happens to Archie and the kids if something happens to me? But then I was thinking about what you said… and you're right, the best thing I can do for them is fighting in the Order for their safety. It just seems a lot scarier this time around. Anyway, I'll come by on the 10th of September. It's been ages since I've seen you and we have loads to talk about! Can't wait to see you.  
Love,  
Melanie_

He ran his thumb over where she'd written _Love_. So innocently written, but it just made him confused. In Morocco, he had rashly told her he still loved her just before Apparating away, and although they hadn't discussed that since then, he found himself sort of hoping that in addition to joining the Order, she was coming to say something along the lines of 'I'm still madly in love with you'. It was unlikely, but he had to have hope.

After he'd found out a year ago that Melanie was happily married, it had taken a while to adjust to the idea at first. Melanie seemed to sense this and never discussed her family, until finally Sirius had asked about them. He was glad for her, but it still hurt; his life had been stolen from him the day he was sent to Azkaban. If not for Wormtail switching sides, Sirius wouldn't be sitting alone in this old miserable house; he'd be married to Melanie and it would be their own kids going off to Hogwarts in a couple of years.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Sirius jumped up from the table, stuffed the letter back in his pocket, and began to walk into the hall. Then he halted, turned around and performed a quick cleaning charm on the kitchen to tidy up the mess of dirty dishes and empty Firewhisky bottles before walking over to unlock the many bolts on the door. It had to be her.

It wasn't. On his doorstep stood Remus. "Oh… hey, Moony," said Sirius, standing aside to let his best friend in. Okay, so it wasn't who he expected, but he wasn't going to complain when there were actually people here at the house.

Remus had spent the last week wandering around on a bit of misinformation looking for the werewolves who were helping Voldemort. His sources had been wrong, so he had come back, and would have to get more accurate information for next time. And he still couldn't get a job because he was a werewolf. Sirius didn't have much to update Remus about, since he couldn't go anywhere or do anything that didn't involve cleaning the house.

Half an hour later, the doorbell rang again and this time it was Tonks, who helped drive out the silence of the old musty house; she accidentally knocked over the troll-leg umbrella stand again, and the portrait in the hallway of Sirius's mother started screeching. "I'm sorry!" Tonks cried, setting the stand upright again as Remus replaced the moth-eaten curtains over the hideous portrait. "That happens every time! I was even thinking this time about how I should make sure to avoid it, but I tripped anyway!"

"I thought you'd be here," Tonks said to Remus as the three of them walked into the kitchen to sit. "I just heard from Kingsley – apparently there was an attack at the Department of Mysteries a few days ago. Only it was hushed up and the _Daily Prophet_ of course won't say a word, so we just found out. Had you heard, Sirius?"

"How would I have heard about anything?" Sirius asked. "I've been shut in this house and you've all been away. You've even been there at the Department of Mysteries guarding that doorway."

"I know you want to help," she said sympathetically. "I'd be going spare if it was me."

"So what happened at the Ministry?" Remus asked.

Tonks sighed. "Well, the Death Eaters killed one of the Unspeakables there who caught them trying to break in. I don't even think she knew anything about the prophecy – Kingsley thinks she was tortured for information and then killed."

Sirius froze. He knew someone who worked at the Department of Mysteries. Someone very special to him. "Who was it?" he asked, trying to keep the alarm out of his voice. "Anyone we know?"

"Someone called Melanie Summerby," said Tonks. Her words were met with a suffocating silence while Remus watched Sirius. Sirius rested his face in his hands, his eyes closed, and said nothing.

"She was in the Order last time," Remus quietly explained to Tonks. "A… close friend of ours."

"Oh – I didn't realise; you never said," Tonks apologised.

It was just as hard for Sirius to hear the news this time around. He had already lost Melanie once, or so he thought at the time, when she'd been in St. Mungo's after being gravely injured by a Death Eater. Sirius could still remember standing by her bed in the hospital, holding her limp, pale hand, seeing her wild mess of brown curly hair unkempt and matted on the pillow – he couldn't believe such a strong person had been reduced to a shadow. A Healer, insisting there was nothing to be done, had had to force him to leave. Sirius had felt so hollow, so lost without her; he'd instantly thrown himself into the most dangerous Order missions in an attempt to find meaning again. The image of Melanie lying lifeless had haunted him for years in Azkaban.

Last time, the Potters had been there to help him – for a few days, anyway. But now, there was no James or Lily. Melanie hadn't been his girl for fourteen years; she had managed to move on with her life, while his had just stood still. He'd never gotten over her. And now she'd died, and it hurt to lose her for the second time… the girl who meant the world to him; the girl he would have done anything for. He'd been in love with her for half his life, even though for most of this time he'd thought her to be dead, just a memory. If Sirius had been able to leave the house, maybe he could have saved her. His face still in his hands, he turned slightly away from Remus and Tonks so they wouldn't be able to see the tears welling up in his eyes.

He had failed with so many he loved; they kept getting taken away from him – James, Lily, Melanie… Sirius felt a hand on his shoulder and saw Remus, his presence reminding Sirius that although he'd lost so much, there was still a lot he hadn't lost. Remus would always be there for him. And James and Lily's son was still alive. Sirius thought of Harry as his own son, and would never let anything happen to Harry. Ever. He owed that much to his best friend.

* * *

June 1996

"Come on, you can do better than that!" Sirius yelled at Bellatrix, laughing as he ducked away from a jet of red light. But then she fired again. He saw the jet of light too late, before he had a chance to react to it, and he felt it hit him on the chest. The scene around him faded into black, and he knew no more.

What felt like a few seconds later, he came to, lying on the floor and looking upward at a tattered veil blowing in a breeze. Bellatrix was nowhere to be seen, nor the rest of the Death Eaters, or Harry, or anyone. Had he just fallen asleep and then woken up after the battle ended? Bewildered, he sat up, and became aware of hushed, whispering voices around him.

"Padfoot?" asked a voice. A very familiar voice he hadn't heard for a long time.

" _Prongs?_ " said Sirius in disbelief. It couldn't be… But there was James, standing beside him, a huge grin on his face. James reached out a hand and helped a very confused Sirius to his feet, then gave him a huge hug, clapping him on the back. "Am I dead?" Sirius finally asked.

"Yep," said James. "Good to see you again, mate."

In the distance, Sirius thought he could see Regulus, who had died during the first war after trying to back out of the Death Eaters. He stared across the misty crowd at his estranged brother, and next to him James said, "You really should hear Regulus's story. Apparently he found out Voldemort's secret and destroyed it, how brilliant is that? He died a hero, but we had no idea at the time."

Sirius grinned at Regulus, feeling a sense of pride he hadn't felt about Regulus in years. Regulus smiled back.

"Sirius!" cried another voice. He turned to see one person shoving her way through the other ghostly figures surrounding the veil, her curly hair bouncing behind her as she ran. "Took you long enough to come see me again," she laughed as she flung her arms around him. Finally coming to his senses in his new surroundings, he hugged Melanie back. If this was death, it wasn't too bad.

After they had released one another, Sirius looked back at James and then at Melanie again to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, drinking in the view, but then his attention was drawn back to the waving, tattered curtain, his curiosity piqued. "Have you ever looked back through this?" he asked, and took a few steps toward it, ready to pull it back a bit and maybe say goodbye to Harry, if he could.

But Melanie grabbed his hand, preventing him from going to the veil. "You can't," she said sadly. "That's the world of the living. We don't belong there anymore."

"I just…" He shrugged. "Prongs, your son is out there right now! You could see him!"

James shook his head. "I can't," was all he said.

"Believe me, I thought about it too," said Melanie. "The first thing anyone thinks when they end up here is how much they wish they could say goodbye. When I died, I never got to say goodbye to my family, or to Mandy, or you. But you wouldn't be able to do anything if you went back. Harry knows you cared about him and that you would have wanted to say goodbye – you died protecting him."

"But I failed."

"No you didn't," said James. "He's still alive. Still fighting to take down Voldemort."

"I wish you could have seen him grow up," said Sirius. "He reminds me so much of you."

James nodded. "I wish that too. At least we had what time we did, though."

Sirius turned to look at Melanie. Their lives hadn't been what they'd dreamed of when they were young and invincible, but at least they'd had the happiest four years together before all of this happened.

"Come away from that curtain," said Melanie with a smile. "We have lots to talk about."

"And Lily's here too," James added. "She'll want to see you."

Sirius allowed Melanie to take his hand and lead him away, as he looked back towards the veil still waving in the archway, waving him onwards and away. Melanie's friend Charlotte appeared, and Sirius looked around to find many others they'd known in life – people from Hogwarts, from the Order, people who had died many years ago, all together again. Shortly Lily emerged from the crowd as well, greeting Sirius with a smile, and after a happy reunion they all continued walking, this time without looking back – away from the veil and into the unknown.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading. I really appreciate every one of you who took the time to read this little story of mine all the way to the end. Hugs to all of you.**


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